Enzymatic Mpemba Effect: Slowing of biochemical reactions by increasing enzyme concentration

TL;DR

This paper reveals a counterintuitive phenomenon where increasing enzyme concentration can slow down enzymatic reactions, termed the Enzymatic Mpemba effect, due to a mechanism similar to the Markovian Mpemba effect.

Contribution

It introduces the Enzymatic Mpemba effect, demonstrating that higher enzyme levels can delay reaction relaxation, a novel insight into enzyme kinetics.

Findings

Increasing enzyme concentration can slow reaction relaxation.

The effect is explained by a mechanism similar to the Markovian Mpemba effect.

The phenomenon occurs in allosteric proteins with multiple modification sites.

Abstract

Increasing the enzyme concentration generally speeds up enzymatic reactions. However, in this Letter, we show that increasing the enzyme concentration can also slow down the enzymatic reaction. We consider a simple allosteric protein with multiple modification sites, catalyzed by two enzymes with the same catalytic activity, but slightly different affinities. We show that increasing the concentration of one enzyme can slow the relaxation to the equilibrium state. The mechanism for this slowing is similar the Markovian Mpemba effect, and we name this phenomenon as the Enzymatic Mpemba effect.