Master curve of boosted diffusion for 10 catalytic enzymes
Ah‐Young Jee, Tsvi Tlusty, Steve Granick
Abstract
Significance The literature is inconsistent regarding evidence for boosted molecular mobility during enzyme catalysis, a phenomenon that challenges the common tenet that enzyme mobility is governed solely by Brownian motion. This paper surveys 10 different catalytic enzymes and shows that magnitude of enhanced diffusion scales with energy release rate, the Gibbs free energy of reaction multiplied by the Michaelis–Menten reaction rate. A practical implication is that boosted effective diffusivity can be used to determine the energetics associated with enzyme action, since effective enzyme diffusivity is simply proportional to the change in free energy associated with the biochemical conversion. This master curve to predict the magnitude of boosted molecular mobility may be useful for estimating the effect in as-yet untested enzymes.