Calculating enzyme kinetic parameters from protein structures

Abstract

Enzyme kinetic parameters can differ between different species and isoenzymes for the same catalysed reaction. Computational approaches to calculate enzymatic kinetic parameters from the three-dimensional structures of proteins will be reviewed briefly here. Enzyme kinetic parameters may be derived by modelling and simulating the rate-determining process. An alternative, approximate, but more computationally efficient approach is the comparison of molecular interaction fields for experimentally characterized enzymes and those for which parameters should be determined. A correlation between differences in interaction fields and experimentally determined kinetic parameters can be used to determine parameters for orthologous enzymes from other species. The estimation of enzymatic kinetic parameters is an important step in setting up mathematical models of biochemical pathways in systems biology.