Open AccessStochasticity and positive feedback enable enzyme kinetics at the membrane to sense reaction size
Author(s) -
Albert A. Lee,
William Huang,
Scott D. Hansen,
Neil H. Kim,
Steven Alvarez,
Jay T. Groves
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the united states of america
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 5.011
H-Index - 771
eISSN - 1091-6490
pISSN - 0027-8424
DOI - 10.1073/pnas.2103626118
Subject(s) - kinetics , enzyme , membrane , enzyme kinetics , chemistry , phosphatase , biophysics , product inhibition , reaction rate , enzyme catalysis , catalysis , biochemistry , biology , non competitive inhibition , active site , physics , quantum mechanics
Significance Cellular membranes span a wide range of spatial dimensions, from the plasma membrane with a scale of microns to vesicles on the nanometer scale. The work presented here identifies a molecular mechanism, based on common features of cellular signaling enzymes, that causes the average enzymatic catalytic rate to exhibit reaction size dependency. This effect stems from stochastic variation, but the final results can be essentially deterministic. In competitive enzymatic reaction cycles, the final product can depend on the size of the reaction system. The simplicity of the mechanism suggests that size-dependent reaction rates may be widespread among signaling enzymes and thus enable reaction size to be an important factor in signal regulation at the membrane.