An investigation of the direct transfer of metabolites from rabbit muscle L-lactate dehydrogenase (LDH, EC 1.1.1.27) to glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GPDH, EC 1.1.1.8) revealed discrepancies between theoretical predictions and experimental results. Measurements of the GPDH reaction rate at a fixed NADH concentration and in the presence of increasing LDH concentrations gave experimental results similar to those previously obtained by Srivastava, Smolen, Betts, Fukushima, Spivey & Bernhard [(1989) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 86, 6464-6468]. However, a mathematical solution of the direct-transfer-mechanism equations as described by Srivastava et al. (1989) showed that the direct-transfer model did not adequately describe the experimental behaviour of the reaction rate at increasing LDH concentrations. In addition, experiments designed to measure the formation of an LDH4.NADH.GPDH2 complex, predicted by the direct-transfer model, indicated that no significant formation of tertiary complex occurred. An examination of other kinetic models, developed to describe the LDH/GPDH/NADH system better, revealed that the experimental results may be best explained by assuming that free NADH, and not E1.NADH, is the sole substrate for GPDH. These results suggest that direct transfer of NADH between rabbit muscle LDH and GPDH does not occur in vitro.