3.I.6B

Mathematical Biology
Part II, 2008

An allosteric enzyme EE reacts with a substrate SS to produce a product PP according to the mechanism

S+Ek1k1C1k2E+PS+C1k3k3C2k4C1+P\begin{gathered} S+E \underset{k_{-1}}{\stackrel{k_{1}}{\rightleftharpoons}} C_{1} \stackrel{k_{2}}{\longrightarrow} E+P \\ S+C_{1} \underset{k_{-3}}{\stackrel{k_{3}}{\rightleftharpoons}} C_{2} \stackrel{k_{4}}{\rightarrow} C_{1}+P \end{gathered}

where C1C_{1} and C2C_{2} are enzyme-substrate complexes. With lowercase letters denoting concentrations, write down a system of differential equations based on the Law of Mass Action which model this reaction mechanism.

The initial conditions are s=s0,e=e0,c1=c2=p=0.s=s_{0}, e=e_{0}, c_{1}=c_{2}=p=0 . Using u=s/s0u=s / s_{0}, vi=ci/e0,τ=k1e0tv_{i}=c_{i} / e_{0}, \tau=k_{1} e_{0} t and ϵ=e0/s0\epsilon=e_{0} / s_{0}, show that the nondimensional reaction mechanism reduces to

dudτ=f(u,v1,v2) and ϵdvidτ=gi(u,v1,v2) for i=1,2\frac{d u}{d \tau}=f\left(u, v_{1}, v_{2}\right) \quad \text { and } \quad \epsilon \frac{d v_{i}}{d \tau}=g_{i}\left(u, v_{1}, v_{2}\right) \quad \text { for } \quad i=1,2

finding expressions for f,g1f, g_{1} and g2g_{2}.