Understanding Competitive Inhibition in Enzyme Kinetics

Enzymes are biological catalysts that facilitate biochemical reactions by lowering the activation energy required for those reactions. They exhibit high specificity for their substrates and are influenced by various factors including pH, temperature, and the presence of inhibitors or activators. In one of the most studied enzyme mechanisms, competitive inhibition occurs when an inhibitor resembles the substrate and competes for binding at the active site of the enzyme. Understanding the behavior of enzymes under different conditions is crucial for biotechnology applications.

Given the following enzyme activity data, identify the scenario that best describes the outcome of introducing a competitive inhibitor in a reaction at varying substrate concentrations:

- At low substrate concentrations, the presence of the competitive inhibitor decreases the reaction rate.

- At high substrate concentrations, the reaction rate approaches that of the uninhibited enzyme.