Question

After discovering a compound that has been confirmed to have inhibitory effects on enzyme X that catalyzes conversion of substrate Y to a colored product Z, Describe in specific detail how one can design and execute an experiment to determine whether the newly discovered compound  is acting as a competitive or non-competitive inhibitor to enzyme X? [5]

Answer 1

There are certain characterstics of non-competitive inhibiton like in non-competitive inhibiton, the inhibitor binds to the the enzyme at a site other than the active site due to which Vmax decreases and no affect on km of the reaction i.e no effect on substrate concentration.

So, when measuring the Vmax and Km of a reaction in the absence and presence of the inhibitor enzyme X and after plotting lineweaver Burk plot we find that there is decrease in Vmax of the reaction and no effect on km then we can say that it is a non-competitive inhibitor.