On the Use of the Adsorption Energy Distribution for the Analysis of Competing Substrate Kinetics

Abstract

The use of renewable raw materials poses new challenges for the chemical and biotechnological industry. For the analysis of the reaction kinetics, elaborate procedures are necessary as the materials are more complex. Thus, a question arises whether interdisciplinary approaches may help to meet these challenges. In this study, the estimation of the adsorption energy distribution (AED) is used to characterize enzyme kinetics and, in particular, competing substrate kinetics for the example of xylose isomerase. Therefore, the kinetic parameters of two literature models are determined based on nonlinear regression and compared with parameter estimates derived from the estimation of the AED. It was shown that based on the AED, the number of competing substrates can be identified automatically, while this information must be provided a priori for the correct identification of the parameters of the literature models via direct nonlinear regression. Thus, the AED provides a promising tool for the characterization of competing substrate kinetics.