Productive and unproductive lysozyme-chitosaccharide complexes. Kinetic investigations.

Flow and relaxation methods were used to study the kinetics of oligosaccharides binding to lysozyme and the pre-steady-state kinetics of the lysozyme-catalyzed, hydrolysis of chitohexose. The minimal mechanism demonstrated, and the kinetics parameters pertaining to the elementary steps, allow interpretations of previous equilibrium and steady-state kinetic measurements which had yielded only complex constants, reflecting both productive and unproductive lysozyme-substrate complexes. In contrast to previous assumptions, the data presented in this paper provide evidence for "stable" productive lysozyme-substrate complexes. Our proposed mechanism utilizes structural information and accounts for the difference in efficiency of lysozyme-catalyzed hydrolysis of chitopentose and chitohexose.