ThermoSlope: A Software for Determining Thermodynamic Parameters from Single Steady-State Experiments

The determination of the temperature dependence of enzyme catalysis has traditionally been a labourious undertaking. We have developed a new approach to the classical Arrhenius parameter estimation by fitting the change in velocity under a gradual change in temperature. The evaluation with a simulated dataset shows that the approach is valid. The approach is demonstrated as a useful tool by characterizing the Bacillus pumilus LipA enzyme. Our results for the lipase show that the enzyme is psychrotolerant, with an activation energy of 15.3 kcal/mol for the chromogenic substrate para-nitrophenyl butyrate. Our results demonstrate that this can produce equivalent curves to the traditional approach while requiring significantly less sample, labour and time. Our method is further validated by characterizing three alpha-amylases from different species and habitats. The experiments with the alpha-amylases show that the approach works over a wide range of temperatures and clearly differentiates between psychrophilic, mesophilic and thermophilic enzymes. The methodology is released as an open-source implementation in Python, available online or used locally. This method of determining the activation parameters can make studies of the temperature dependence of enzyme catalysis more widely adapted to understand how enzymes have evolved to function in extreme environments. Moreover, the thermodynamic parameters that are estimated serve as functional validations of the empirical valence bond calculations of enzyme catalysis.