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Exploration of the spontaneous fluctuating activity of single enzyme molecules
Author(s) -
Schwabe Anne,
Maarleveld Timo R.,
Bruggeman Frank J.
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/j.febslet.2013.07.005
Subject(s) - enzyme , transcription (linguistics) , enzyme kinetics , biophysics , enzyme assay , chemistry , biochemistry , biology , active site , philosophy , linguistics
Single enzyme molecules display inevitable, stochastic fluctuations in their catalytic activity. In metabolism, for instance, the stochastic activity of individual enzymes is averaged out due to their high copy numbers per single cell. However, many processes inside cells rely on single enzyme activity, such as transcription, replication, translation, and histone modifications. Here we introduce the main theoretical concepts of stochastic single‐enzyme activity starting from the Michaelis–Menten enzyme mechanism. Next, we discuss stochasticity of multi‐substrate enzymes, of enzymes and receptors with multiple conformational states and finally, how fluctuations in receptor activity arise from fluctuations in signal concentration. This paper aims to introduce the exciting field of single‐molecule enzyme kinetics and stochasticity to a wider audience of biochemists and systems biologists.