Isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) can be used to study the thermodynamics of enzyme substrate binding or the kinetics of substrate turnover (or both). Substrate-binding interactions are observed in a typical ITC titration experiment in which the heat change for the addition of an aliquot of substrate to a solution containing the enzyme is determined for a number of titrant (i. e., substrate) injections and the data fit for the thermodynamic parameters (Delta G, Delta H, and - T Delta S) for substrate binding. Of course, these measurements must be made under conditions where the substrate binds but does not turnover. In the ITC "kinetics"experiment, the power change observed after injection of an excess of substrate into a solution of the enzyme is a direct measure of the rate at which substrate is converted to product, and the ITC data can be analyzed for the kinetic parameters (V-max, k(cat), K-M, and k(cat)/K-M). The ITC technique is particularly versatile in that it can be applied to systems where there might not be a change in a spectroscopic signal for either substrate binding or the reaction of the substrate to form product. A complication is that if there are competing reactions, for example, buffer protonation, or product binding, to name just two, the enthalpy change measured for either substrate binding or for substrate turnover will be a summation of all of the reaction heats. Enzyme studies are typically done in buffered solutions at constant pH. The general, and often incorrect, assumption is that the buffer components are simply spectators and not participants in either substrate binding or substrate turnover. This chapter describes how we have used ITC measurements to identify problem buffers that impact the kinetics for an enzyme catalyzed reaction. Herein, we show the effects of several buffers on the steady-state kinetics for the conversion of the substrate, 3,4-dihydroxyphenyl acetate (homoprotocatechuate), to the ring-opened product, 5-carboxymethyl-2-hydroxymuconic semialdehyde by the nonheme iron(II) metalloenzyme, homoprotocatechuate 2,3-dioxygenase. Several buffers were observed to engage in buffer/enzyme interactions within the active site pocket. These enzyme-buffer interactions were shown to inhibit substrate turnover and to contribute additional enthalpy terms to the overall heat of reaction observed for substrate turnover (and for substrate binding).
