Patterns of Spatiotemporal Organization in an Allosteric Enzyme Model

Abstract

The behavior of a model for an allosteric enzyme oscillator activated by the reaction product is analyzed in the presence of diffusion. When the concentrations of the chemicals are fixed at the boundaries, dynamic dissipative structures are shown to arise in the form of propagating concentration waves. The model is applied to the phosphofructokinase reaction and suggests that a spatiotemporal organization may originate at a macroscopic (supracellular) level from the glycolytic system.