Open AccessNanoscale Catalyst Chemotaxis Can Drive the Assembly of Functional Pathways
Author(s) -
Charles Kocher,
Luca Agozzino,
Ken A. Dill
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
the journal of physical chemistry. b
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1520-6106
pISSN - 1520-5207
DOI - 10.1021/acs.jpcb.1c04498
Subject(s) - chemotaxis , catalysis , nanoscopic scale , diffusion , mechanism (biology) , substrate (aquarium) , biophysics , chemistry , nanotechnology , molecule , materials science , chemical physics , receptor , biology , physics , biochemistry , thermodynamics , ecology , organic chemistry , quantum mechanics
Recent experiments demonstrate molecular chemotaxis or altered diffusion rates of enzymes in the presence of their own substrates. We show here an important implication, namely, that if a nanoscale catalyst A produces a small-molecule ligand product L which is the substrate of another catalyst B, the two catalysts will attract each other. We explore this nonequilibrium producer recruitment force (ProRec) in a reaction-diffusion model. The predicted cat-cat association will be the strongest when A is a fast producer of L and B is a tight binder to it. ProRec is a force that could drive a mechanism (the catpath mechanism) by which catalysts could become spatially localized into functional pathways, such as in the biochemical networks in cells, which can achieve complex goals.