Related papers: Enzyme-enriched condensates show self-propulsion, …
Several different enzymes display an apparent diffusion coefficient that increases with the concentration of their substrate. Moreover, their motion becomes directed in substrate gradients. Currently, there are several competing models for…
Living systems contain intricate biochemical networks whose structure is closely related to their function and allows them to exhibit robust behavior in the presence of external stimuli. Such networks typically involve catalytic enzymes,…
Enzymes show two distinct transport behaviors in the presence of their substrates in solution. First, their diffusivity enhances with increasing substrate concentration. In addition, enzymes perform directional motion toward regions with…
The spatial organization of enzymes often plays a crucial role in the functionality and efficiency of enzymatic pathways. To fully understand the design and operation of enzymatic pathways, it is therefore crucial to understand how the…
Enzymes have been recently proposed to have mechanical activity associated with their chemical activity. In a number of recent studies, it has been reported that enzymes undergo enhanced diffusion in the presence of their corresponding…
Phase separation drives the formation of biomolecular condensates in cells, which comprise many components and sometimes possess multiple phases. The equilibrium physics of phase separation is well understood, but many components in…
Phase separation into compositionally and physically distinct domains is ubiquitous in (non)living matter ranging from alloys and emulsions to biomolecular condensates in cells. The organization of these domains can be controlled, for…
Biomolecular condensates help organize the cell cytoplasm and nucleoplasm into spatial compartments with different chemical compositions. A key feature of such compositional patterning is the local enrichment of enzymatically active…
Many enzymes appear to diffuse faster in the presence of substrate and to drift either up or down a concentration gradient of their substrate. Observations of these phenomena, termed enhanced enzyme diffusion (EED) and enzyme chemotaxis,…
Biomolecular condensates in cells are often rich in catalytically-active enzymes. This is particularly true in the case of the large enzymatic complexes known as metabolons, which contain different enzymes that participate in the same…
One of the hypothesized functions of biomolecular condensates is to act as chemical reactors, where chemical reactions can be modulated, i.e. accelerated or slowed down, while substrate molecules enter and products exit from the condensate.…
Active transport of biomolecular condensates and cell migration in collectives are fundamental to development, homeostasis, and processes such as cancer progression, wound healing, and infection response. Yet how these assemblies are…
We show that the force generated by active enzyme molecules are strong enough to influence the dynamics of their surroundings under artificial crowded environments. We measured the behavior of polymer microparticles in a…
Chemotaxis of enzymes in response to gradients in the concentration of their substrate has been widely reported in recent experiments, but a basic understanding of the process is still lacking. Here, we develop a microscopic theory for…
Several enzymes exhibit enhanced diffusion in the presence of a substrate. One explanation of this enhancement arises from fluctuating dimer models, which suggest that enzymes have a higher diffusion constant when interacting with…
Spatial organization in metabolic pathways can arise from the interplay between enzymatic reaction kinetics and diffusion-driven instabilities. In this work we investigate how reversible enzyme--substrate binding influences pattern…
Push-pull networks are ubiquitous in signal transduction pathways in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. They allow cells to strongly amplify signals via the mechanism of zero-order ultrasensitivity. In a push-pull network, two…
Recent experiments have revealed that the diffusivity of exothermic and fast enzymes is enhanced when they are catalytically active, and different physical mechanisms have been explored and quantified to account for this observation. We…
The formation of condensates is now considered as a major organization principle of eukaryotic cells. Several studies have recently shown that the properties of these condensates are affected by enzymatic reactions. We propose here a simple…
Enzymes within biochemical pathways are often colocalized, yet the consequences of specific spatial enzyme arrangements remain poorly understood. We study the impact of enzyme arrangement on reaction efficiency within a reaction-diffusion…