In this paper we apply the incremental method for the identification of reaction kinetics [Brendel, M., Bonvin, D., Marquardt, W., 2006. Incremental identification of complex reaction kinetics in homogeneous systems. Chemical Engineering Science 61, 5404-5420] to the oxidation of formate by dehydrogenase. For the identification task little a priori knowledge is assumed and thus a high number of model candidates have to be considered. In order to identify the best model from a set of candidates the number of candidates is efficiently reduced in a first step using the incremental method. In a second step the best model and its parameters are determined based on the reduced candidate set in a statistically sound manner using the classical simultaneous method. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.