I'm measuring the differences in Vmax and Km between a Wild-type protein and a mutant.
Upon acquiring the Vmax and Km from triplicate enzyme assays for each protein (WT and mutant), what is the best statistical test I can use to measure if there's a significant difference between their Vmax and Km?
If it's a t-test, for example, would I be comparing the mean Vmax and Km of each enzyme assay replicate?
Thank you
Hi Sarah Richards
Choice of the statistical test depends on the hypothesis you want to test and the distribution of the data.
If you want to test the null hypothesis that there is no difference in mean Vmax and Km between protein types, you can test it with two separate t-tests provided your data is normally distributed.
Another important factor to consider is the number of datapoint (i.e. enzyme assays) you have for each protein. If the number is small, you may not be able to statistically detect small differences with a t-test. For such situations, researchers have suggested to report the Vmax and Km estimates along with their standard error from the model used to obtain Vmax and Km (see https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_to_do_statistical_analysis_of_the_enzyme_kinetics_parameters_Km_and_Vmax_among_several_treatment_groups).
@ Sarah Richards ,
If you want to test the significance of difference between the means of Vmax and Km then it will be a problem of t test. On the other hand, ifvyou want to test the significance of difference between the variances of Vmax and Km then it will be a problem of F test.
@ Kulvir Singh ,
The square of t is nothing but F.
If the degrees of freedom of t is n then the degrees of freedom of F, which is the square of t is 1 & n .
Thus, a hypothesis which can be tested by t can also be tested by F.
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