Determination of the enthalpy change for anabolism by four methods

The enthalpy change for anabolism is needed to model the growth/respiration relation in plants. If all CO₂ production is assigned to catabolism, the anabolic reaction becomes C_substrate→C_products+xO₂ with an enthalpy change, ΔH_b. Four methods are proposed for determining ΔH_b: (a) From the difference in the heats of combustion of substrate and anabolic products (i.e. newly grown tissue). (b) From the composition of newly grown tissue and application of Thornton’s rule. (c) From independently measured values of the specific growth rate, R_SG, and of the product (R_SG ΔH_b). The product (R_SG ΔH_b) equals (−ΔH_CO2R_CO2−R_q) where R_CO2 is the specific rate of CO₂ production by respiration, ΔH_CO2 is the heat of combustion of respiratory substrate per mole of CO₂ and R_q is the specific metabolic heat rate. ΔH_b is then calculated as the ratio (R_SG ΔH_b)/R_SG. (d) From (ΔH_b=−(R_q/R_CO2+ΔH_CO2) [(1−)/] where is the substrate carbon conversion efficiency obtained from a total carbon balance. The first three methods have been tested and compared on oat seedlings and the last on corn seedlings. ΔH_b values from all four methods are in reasonable agreement despite the different assumptions involved.