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To efficiently catalyze multi-step biochemical reaction pathways, cells have optimized the synergistic action of a multitude of enzymes. They not only control the concentrations and activities of enzymes, but often also coordinate enzymes from the same biochemical reaction pathway by arranging them in self-assembled multi-enzyme complexes. Such complexes are the basis of `channeling' mechanisms, where intermediate products in multi-step reactions are effectively passed from one enzyme to the next. These same principles can be applied in artificial nano-scale systems, with the ultimate goal to control and optimize biochemical reactions at will, e.g. for the production of medical substances or renewable energy sources. While enzymatic activity has been studied for over a century, quantitative experiments were limited to the bulk level until the recent advent of single-molecule enzymology techniques, which permit the quantitative characterization of the stochastic reaction dynamics of enzymes. Single-molecule experiments with enzymes have also spurred the theoretical analysis of stochastic enzyme dynamics, but the theoretical description and analysis of enzyme complexes is only beginning to develop. I will describe some recent progress in this direction.

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U. Gerland, TU München
Seminarraum Theoretische Physik
Contact: not specified