What is Vo?

Memory Hack💡

Vo is initial velocity, or velocity at 0 seconds.

Notes

Vo is the initial velocity of a reaction. This datapoint is used to visualize how quickly an enzyme is going to catalyze a reaction when there is basically an unlimited amount of substrate available.

So, scientists designed an experiment that utilized this in order to visualize an enzymes activity. The experiment was as follows:

The enzyme concentration is kept constant in a solution, and a varying amount of substate is added. Each trial with the varying amount of substrate is shown as a different line on the graph.

Finally, there is going to be a point at which we get a hyperbolic looking curve. This is where we are starting to see the true enzyme kinetics, as there is starting to be enough substate that it can catalyze reactions very quickly.

You may be asking: Why then, would it be a hyperbolic curve?

It is a hyperbolic curve because the forward and reverse reaction is occuring following the inital point. Additionally, as product begins to be made, there is less substrate around and as easily available for the enzymes to interact with, causing the delay.

However, our goal is to examine what the enzyme activity looks like with NO obstacles. So, we look at just the very few moments of the enzymes activity, labeled Vo, in order to get this information.

This is going to serve as a sort of baseline, in which if there were no "obstacles", enzymes would behave in this manner forever.

This lets us generate the equation:

Vo= (Vmax[S] / Km[S])

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