Alright. So in this video, we're going to talk about the degree of inhibition on the free enzyme. And so the degree of inhibition on the free enzyme is represented with the Greek variable alpha. And so the degree of inhibition on the free enzyme alpha is just equal to α=1+concentration of inhibitorinhibition constant. And so this degree of inhibition on the free enzyme alpha is a unitless factor that is always greater than or equal to 1. And so here you can see that alpha will always be greater than or equal to 1. Now when there's no inhibitor present at all, that means that alpha is going to equal exactly 1. And then as alpha begins to increase, then the concentration of inhibitor will also increase. So a value of alpha greater than 1 means that there is an inhibitor present. And, of course, the greater alpha is, the more inhibitor is present.
And so if we take a look at our image down below, notice over here on the left hand side what we have is the same enzyme catalyzed reaction that we've seen so many times before in our previous lesson videos. And so here in this video, we're specifically focusing on, again, the degree of inhibition on the free enzyme alpha. And so that means that the inhibitor here is going to be only inhibiting the free enzyme as we see here. And so, of course, we know that when the inhibitor is bound to the enzyme, no reaction is able to take place. And so, here what we can see, again, what we're emphasizing is that the degree of inhibition on the free enzyme is equal to the variable alpha. And alpha is just equal to, again, α=1+concentration of inhibitorinhibition constant.
And so, if we take a second and think about what this here actually means, we know that, of course, the concentration of inhibitor is either going to be 0 or some positive number. We're never going to have a negative number for the concentration of inhibitor. We know from our previous lesson videos that the inhibition constant also represents a specific concentration of inhibitor. It's the exact concentration of inhibitor that allows for half of maximum inhibition. And so, if we have 2 concentrations here that are both positive, then that means that this ratio here is going to be positive. And of course, any positive number here, plus 1, is going to be greater than 1. And in this equation right here, there's no way that alpha is going to be less than 1. And so here, in our chart below where it says alpha is less than 1, what we can write is that it's simply not possible to have an alpha less than 1. We're never going to see that, in our course.
And so also notice that, if alpha is exactly equal to 1, as we mentioned up above in our lesson, if alpha is equal to 1, that means that there's going to be no inhibitor present. So essentially the inhibitor is going to be absent or we could just say that there's no inhibitor present when alpha is equal to 1. Now in our last scenario here we can see if alpha is greater than 1, that means that the inhibitor is indeed present and it will be inhibiting the enzyme. And so, we'll be able to show you guys an example of how to utilize this degree of inhibition on the free enzyme alpha, in our next video. So I will see you guys there.