Premium
A generic rate equation for catalysed, template‐directed polymerisation
Author(s) -
Hofmeyr Jan-Hendrik S.,
Gqwaka Olona P.C.,
Rohwer Johann M.
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.2013.07.011
Subject(s) - monomer , polymerization , sequence (biology) , polymer , dimer , polynucleotide , rate equation , chemistry , chain (unit) , kinetics , polymer chemistry , organic chemistry , physics , biochemistry , quantum mechanics , astronomy
Biosynthetic networks link to growth and reproduction processes through template‐directed synthesis of macromolecules such as polynucleotides and polypeptides. No rate equation exists that captures this link in a way that it can effectively be incorporated into a single computational model of the overall process. This paper describes the derivation of such a generic steady‐state rate equation for catalysed, template‐directed polymerisation reactions with varying monomer stoichiometry and varying chain length. The derivation is based on a classical Michaelis–Menten mechanism with template binding and an arbitrary number of chain elongation steps that produce a polymer composed of an arbitrary number of monomer types. The rate equation only requires the identity of the first dimer in the polymer sequence; for the remainder only the monomer composition needs be known. Further simplification of a term in the denominator yielded an equation requiring no positional information at all, only the monomer composition of the polymer; this equation still gave an excellent estimate of the reaction rate provided that either the monomer concentrations are at least half‐saturating, or the polymer is very long.