Acceleration of enzymatic catalysis by active hydrodynamic fluctuations

TL;DR

This paper investigates how active hydrodynamic fluctuations in cellular environments influence enzymatic reaction rates, revealing that fast active noise can accelerate catalysis, implying enzymes may interact through long-range hydrodynamic effects.

Contribution

It introduces a novel perspective on enzyme catalysis by linking active hydrodynamic noise to reaction rate modulation, highlighting collective enzyme interactions via long-range hydrodynamics.

Findings

Fast active noise enhances enzyme reaction rates.

Slow active noise has negligible effect on catalysis.

Enzymes may interact through long-range hydrodynamic coupling.

Abstract

The cellular milieu is teeming with biochemical nano-machines whose activity is a strong source of correlated non-thermal fluctuations termed active noise. Essential elements of this circuitry are enzymes, catalysts that speed up the rate of metabolic reactions by orders of magnitude, thereby making life possible. Here, we examine the possibility that active noise in the cell, or in vitro, affects enzymatic catalytic rate by accelerating or decelerating the crossing rate of energy barriers during the reaction. Considering hydrodynamic perturbations induced by biochemical activity as a source of active noise, we evaluate their impact on the enzymatic cycle using a combination of analytic and numerical methods. Our estimates show that the fast component of the active noise spectrum enhances the rate of enzymes, while reactions remain practically unaffected by the slow noise spectrum. Revisiting the physics of barrier crossing under the influence of active hydrodynamic fluctuations suggests that the biochemical activity of macromolecules such as enzymes is coupled to active noise. Thus, we propose that enzymatic catalysis is a collective, many-body process in which enzymes may affect each other's activity via long-range hydrodynamic interaction, with potential impact on biochemical networks in living and artificial systems alike.