# Enhanced Diffusion and Chemotaxis of Enzymes

## TL;DR

This review discusses the phenomena of enhanced enzyme diffusion and chemotaxis, exploring experimental evidence, proposed mechanisms, and future research directions in understanding enzymes as active matter.

## Contribution

It provides a comprehensive summary of experimental findings and theoretical explanations for enzyme diffusion and chemotaxis, highlighting their significance and unresolved questions.

## Key findings

- Enzymes exhibit increased diffusion rates in the presence of substrate.
- Enzymes can move directionally along substrate concentration gradients.
- The physical mechanisms underlying these phenomena remain uncertain.

## Abstract

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, respectively, lead to a novel view of enzymes as active matter. Enzyme chemotaxis and EED may be important in biology, and they could have practical applications in biotechnology and nanotechnology. They also are of considerable biophysical interest; indeed, their physical mechanisms are still quite uncertain. This review provides an analytic summary of experimental studies of these phenomena and of the mechanisms that have been proposed to explain them, and offers a perspective of future directions for the field.