Quasi-Steady-State Laws in Enzyme Kinetics

作者：Banghe Li, Yuefeng Shen, Bo Li · 发表于：The Journal of Physical Chemistry A · 年份：2008 · DOI：10.1021/jp077597q · 被引用次数：44 · 研究领域：Protein Structure and Dynamics、Gene Regulatory Network Analysis、Microbial Metabolic Engineering and Bioproduction

To understand how enzymes work is essential for understanding life processes. And, in enzyme kinetics, a fundamental assumption is the so-called Quasi-Steady-State Assumption, which has the history of more than 80 years and has been proven very fruitful in analyzing the equations of enzyme kinetics. Many experimental results and numerical results have shown the validity of the assumption. So, an important problem is if it is always true. If it is always true, then it should be a law, not only an assumption. In this paper, we prove mathematically rigorously that it is indeed always true. Hence, it is a law, and we name it the Quasi-Steady-State Law. Actually, more precisely, we have two Quasi-Steady-State Laws. In one of them quasi-steady state means that the concentration of the enzyme-substrate complex remains approximately constant, and in the other it means that the change rate of the concentration of enzyme-substrate complex is extremely tiny.