Kinetic theory of the biochemical switch

Biochemical switches inside a cell are usually based on the conformational transition of a protein the protein can have little or no biological activity in one state 

There are essentially two types of control mechanisms for biochemical switching allosteric cooperative transition and reversible chemical modification. Allosteric cooperativity, which was discussed in Chapter 4, was discovered in 1965 by Jacques Monod, Jefferies Wyman, and Jean-Picrrc Changeux [143], and independently by Daniel Koshland, George Nemethy and David Filmer [116]. The molecular basis of this phenomenon, which is well understood in terms of three-dimensional protein crystal structures and protein-ligand interaction, is covered in every biochemistry textbook [147] as well as special treatises [215], 

Reversible chemical modification of enzymes, which was discovered in 1955 by Edmond Fischer and Edwin Krebs [58], is a more prevalent mechanism for cellular signaling switching. Fischer and Krebs showed that enzymes can be turned from an inactive form to an active form via phosphorylation of certain residues of the protein. Enzymes that catalyze phosphorylation (addition of a phosphate group coupled with ATP or GTP hydrolysis) are called protein kinases. Enzymes that catalyze dephosphorylation (which is not the reverse reaction of the phosphorylation) are called phosphatases. For example, a protein tyrosine phosphatase is an enzyme that catalyzes the removal of a phosphate group from a tyrosine residue in a phosphorylated protein [57], 

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