Model for the influence of mass transport on enzymatic hydrolysis of polysaccharides

In this paper enzymatic hydrolysis reactions have been considered as integration-limited reactions analogous to crystal growth. Based on the mathematical formulation of diffusion of polysaccharide substrate molecules to binding sites of the enzyme, integration kinetics were derived and compared to measured data. Significant is the measured and calculated decrease of the ratio of the specific activity and the Michaelis-Menten parameter with increasing molar mass of the enzymes with an exponent more than unity.