Catalysis-Induced Phase Separation and Autoregulation of Enzymatic Activity

TL;DR

This paper introduces a thermodynamic model showing how enzyme catalysis can induce phase separation in mixtures, leading to potential autoregulation of enzymatic activity with biological implications.

Contribution

It presents the first thermodynamically consistent model demonstrating catalysis-induced phase separation and its role in enzyme autoregulation.

Findings

Catalysis alone can induce phase separation in enzyme mixtures.

Fast reaction rates allow binodal lines to be computed via an effective free energy.

CIPS can autoregulate enzymatic activity, relevant to biological systems.

Abstract

We present a thermodynamically consistent model describing the dynamics of a multi-component mixture where one enzyme component catalyzes a reaction between other components. We find that the catalytic activity alone can induce phase separation for sufficiently active systems and large enzymes, without any equilibrium interactions between components. In the limit of fast reaction rates, binodal lines can be calculated using a mapping to an effective free energy. We also explain how this catalysis-induced phase separation (CIPS) can act to autoregulate the enzymatic activity, which points at the biological relevance of this phenomenon.