Question

When a competitive inhibitor molecule is bound to amylase, and there is a regular amount of substrate present, will the reaction happen? Please explain

Answer 1

Ans: Competitive inhibitor as the name suggests, compete with the substrate for the binding to the active site of the enzyme. The inhibitor is able to bind with the active site due to the structural similarity between substrate and inhibitor and when the competitive inhibitor binds to the active site than substrate is not able to bind with the enzyme and the reaction will not be proceed.

So when a competitive inhibitor molecule is bound to amylase, and there is a regular amount of substrate present, the reaction will not be proceed because all the active sites will be captured by the competitive inhibitor and substrate will not bind to the amylase's active site for the reaction to proceed. This can be altered by increasing the concentration of substrate as when concentration of substrate is high there will be more chance of binding the substrate to the active site of the enzyme as compared to the competitive inhibitor.

Hence the reaction will not happen when there is regular amount of substrate present.