Do Different Temperatures Affect Enzyme Activity in a Parabolic Arrhenius Plot?

[Tymothee Waldner]

Hi, I am currently doing a kinetic study on an enzyme catalysed reaction and plotting the Arrhenius graph I got a parabola. My idea is to take the derivative at each point, meaning there would be different activation energies depending on the temperature, guessing it is due to enzymes dependency to heat. Does it make sens or would it be data forcing ? Thank you for your help

 

[Fra]

it is due to enzymes dependency to heat. Does it make sens or would it be data forcing ?

Enzymes have optimal temperature ranges, sometimes it's also a balance between activity and heat induced denaturation that makes you get an effective peak; where the activation energy is effectively the lowest. So the question is your data represents steady states, or sampled from average processes? If you can measure also the enzyme activity it would help I guess? Examples are for example the processes in brewing science, where one have optimal temp ranges for starch breakdown etc. But there I think the explainaation is the "effective" activity given that enzymes are also degraded from the higher temps.

/Fredrik