Rate-Limiting Steps in Ethanol Metabolism and Approaches to Changing These Rates Biochemically

Abstract

Many attempts have been made to increase the rate of metabolism of ethanol, but none has changed the rate more than about two-fold. To understand the reasons for these failures and to develop successful methods, we need to know which steps in ethanol metabolism are “rate-limiting”. These are difficult to determine experimentally because the rates of each step are controlled by the concentrations of several metabolites and the kinetic characteristics of the enzymes involved, and because the fluxes through all steps in a steady-state process are the same. Despite these problems, each step in ethanol metabolism has been said to be the rate-limiting step by someone. Furthermore, it should be noted that the rate of every step affects the overall rate, and there may be peveral slow steps (70).