Kinetics and mechanism of hydrolysis of acetylthiocholine by butyrylcholine esterase.

Kinetics and mechanism of hydrolysis of acetylthiocholine by the enzyme butyrylcholine esterase was studied. The spectrophotometric Ellman's method and potentiometric pH-stat method were used for continuous determination of the actual concentration of the products thiocholine and acetic acid in the reaction mixture. The validity of the Michaelis-Menten (Briggs-Haldane) equation in the whole course of the reaction under used conditions was proved. The corresponding kinetics parameters (Vm and KM) were calculated from the obtained dependences of concentration of thiocholine or acetic acid vs. time and compared. From this comparison the deciding kinetic role of the step producing thiocholine was derived. The values of initial molar concentration of the enzyme and of the rate constants of the kinetic model were estimated.