Multi-competitive enzymatic reactions in organic media: a simple test for the determination of lipase fatty acid specificity.

Multiple substrate competition was kinetically analyzed to study lipase-catalyzed reactions in organic media. For each substrate, a competitive factor (the ratio of the specificity constants kcat/Km) was measured by reference to the best substrate using a mixture of fatty acid ethyl esters submitted to a solvolysis reaction by n-propanol. A scale of competitive factors was established which quantitatively described the lipase specificity.