Mechanism
In competitive inhibition, at any given moment, the enzyme may be bound to the inhibitor, the substrate, or neither, but it cannot bind both at the same time.
In virtually every case, competitive inhibitors bind in the same binding site as the substrate, but same-site binding is not a requirement. A competitive inhibitor could bind to an allosteric site of the free enzyme and prevent substrate binding, as long as it does not bind to the allosteric site when the substrate is bound.
In competitive inhibition, the maximum velocity of the reaction is unchanged, while the apparent affinity of the substrate to the binding site is decreased (the dissociation constant is apparently increased). The change in (Michaelis-Menten constant) is parallel to the alteration in . Any given competitive inhibitor concentration can be overcome by increasing the substrate concentration in which case the substrate will outcompete the inhibitor in binding to the enzyme.
Read more about this topic: Competitive Inhibition
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