THE THERMODYNAMICS OF THE KREBS CYCLE AND RELATED-COMPOUNDS

A survey is made of the enthalpies of formation, third law entropies and Gibbs energies available for Krebs cycle and related compounds. These include formate, acetate, succinate, fumarate, glycine, alanine, aspartate and glutamate. The potential of the NAD+/NADH couple is recalculated based on the ethanol/acetaldehyde and isopropanol/acetone equilibria. The reported enzyme catalyzed equilibrium constants of the Krebs cycle reactions are evaluated with estimated errors. These 28 equilibria form a network of reactions that is solved by a least squares regression procedure giving Gibbs energies of formation for 21 Krebs cycle and related compounds. They appear to be accurate to ±0.4 kJ⋅mol− 1 for some compounds but ±1 kJ⋅mol− 1 in less favorable cases. This procedure indicates which third law ΔfG and enzyme equilibria are inaccurate, and allows very accurate ΔfG to be determined for compounds related to the Krebs cycle by measuring enzyme equilibrium constants. © 1990, American Institute of Physics for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. All rights reserved.