Cooperative Properties of Enzymes and Reaction Kinetics

Abstract

Enzymes are complex cooperative systems by virtue of their macromolecular structure. All conformational transformations in protein molecules are cooperative in character, so that the development of induced structural correspondence between an enzyme and substrate is itself a cooperative process. In this sense, enzymatic activity is based on the same phenomena that produce the elasticity of rubber, i.e., those of cooperative rotational isomer-ization [2, 206], An understanding of this important hypothesis is the starting point for enzyme physics, whose development has only just begun.