Theoretical treatment of tight-binding inhibition of an enzyme. Ribonuclease inhibitor as special case.

A general treatment of very tight-binding inhibition is described. It was applied to purified endogenous RNAase inhibitor from rat testis. This treatment discriminates among the different types of inhibition and allows for calculation of the inhibition parameters. When very tight-binding inhibitions are studied at similar molar concentrations of both enzyme and inhibitor, a further approach is required. This is also described and applied to the RNAase inhibitor. A Ki value of 3.2 x 10(-12) M was found for this inhibitor protein. On the basis of this result, it was considered inappropriate to classify this type of inhibitor in terms of competitive or non-competitive, as has been done for such inhibitors so far. Functional consequences of this analysis are discussed for the RNAase-RNAase inhibitor system.