The original Michaelis constant: translation of the 1913 Michaelis-Menten paper.

ABSTRACT: Nearly 100 years ago Michaelis and Menten published their now classic paper [Michaelis, L., and Menten, M. L. (1913) Die Kinetik der Invertinwirkung. Biochem. Z. 49, 333-369] in which they showed that the rate of an enzyme-catalyzed reaction is proportional to the concentration of the enzyme-substrate complex predicted by the Michaelis-Menten equation. Because the original text was written in German yet is often quoted by English-speaking authors, we undertook a complete translation of the 1913 publication, which we provide as Supporting Information . Here we introduce the translation, describe the historical context of the work, and show a new analysis of the original data. In doing so, we uncovered several surprises that reveal an interesting glimpse into the early history of enzymology

SUBMITTER: Michaelis L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3381512 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature