Enzyme kinetics, binding kinetics and pharmacological dose-response curves are currently analyzed by a few standard methods. Some of these, like Michaelis-Menten enzyme kinetics, use plausible approximations, others, like Hill equations for dose-response curves, are outdated. Calculating realistic reaction schemes requires numerical mathematical routines which usually are not covered in the curricula of life science. This textbook will give a step-by-step introduction to numerical solutions of non-linear and differential equations. It will be accompanied with a set of programs to calculate any reaction scheme on any personal computer. Typical examples from analytical biochemistry and pharmacology can be used as versatile templates. When a reaction scheme is applied for data fitting, the resulting parameters may not be unique. Correlation of parameters will be discussed and simplification strategies will be offered.

Preparing the computer

Binding equilibria
Binding kinetics
Least squares fit to experimental data
Multi-parameter fits
Comparing the two different approaches.