Characterisation of pancreatic lipase substrate specificity in organic reaction media by a kinetic method

The possibility of assaying porcine pancreatic lipase specificity in organic media by kinetic modelling of esterification and transesterification reactions has been investigated. The calculated rate constant of the two-substrate reversible model was used as to estimate the chain length specificity in esterification reactions of fatty acids. This simple method is suitable to quantify the specificity in given reaction conditions, needing one single measurement for each substrate.