ABSTRACT:The dioxygenation of 50 pM linoleate at 0.1 pM (13s)-hydroperoxylinoleate, 240 pM 02, pH 10, and 25 O C , catalyzed by varying amounts of soybean lipoxygenase-1, was studied with rapid kinetic techniques. The aim was to assess the effect of transient redistributions of the Fe(I1) and Fe(II1) enzyme forms on the shape of the reaction progress curves. Reactions initiated with iron(I1) lipoxygenase show an initial increase in rate, the "kinetic lag phase" or "induction period". [Schilstra et al. (1992) Biochemistry 31,7692-76991 also shows an induction period whose duration is inversely proportional to [lipoxygenase]. These observations, in combination with nonsteady-state numerical simulations, lead to the conclusion that, at [lipoxygenase] < 2 nM, pre-steady-state redistributions of enzyme intermediates occur fast with respect to the rate at which the concentrations of substrates and products change. At higher lipoxygenase concentrations, the pre-steady-state redistributions contribute significantly to the induction period. From a nonlinear least-squares fit to the steady-state rate equation of data obtained at lipoxygenase concentrations of 0.5 and 1 nM, it was calculated that 1% of the linoleate radicals that are formed after hydrogen abstraction dissociate from the active site before enzymic oxygen insertion has occurred.Lipoxygenases (EC 1.13.1 1.12) catalyze dioxygenation of polyunsaturated fatty acids that contain one or more (12,42)-pentadiene systems. Their products are chiral (E,Z) conjugated hydroperoxy fatty acids (Veldink & Vliegenthart, 1984;Schewe et al., 1986;Kiihn et al., 1986a), which are the precursors of a number of physiological effectors in animal tissue (Parker, 1987) and possibly also in plants (Gardner, 1991).Lipoxygenase catalysis of polyunsaturated fatty acid dioxygenation exhibits a characteristic "induction period" (Haining & Axelrod, 1958) or "kinetic lag phase" (Smith & Lands, 1972): after the initiation of the reaction, the rate gradually increases until a maximum rate is reached. In this paper, we shall refer to the phase in which the rate increases as the induction period, irrespective of the cause of the acceleration. The induction period is eliminated when the product hydroperoxide (P) (Scheme I) is present in micromolar amounts at the start of the reaction (Haining & Axelrod, 1958;Schilstra et al., 1992). EPR studies on soybean lipoxygenase-1 demonstrated that P converts the iron cofactor of lipoxygenase from Fe(I1) into Fe(II1) (De Groot et al., 1975a;Slappendel et al., 1983). However, initiation of the dioxygenation reaction with iron(II1) instead of iron(I1) lipoxygenase does not in general result in disappearance of the induction period. In some experiments (at 2.4 nM soybean lipoxygenase-1 and 0.24 or 0.48 mM linoleate) the progress curves of reactions initiated with iron(II1) lipoxygenase seemed to be identical to those of reactions initiated with iron(I1) lipoxygenase (De Groot et al., 1975b). When rapid kinetic techniques were used to study the initial stage...