Instability and Self‐Oscillations in the Cell Energy Metabolism

Abstract

Abstract The temporal organization of the cell energy metabolism is the only way of maintaining a stable ATP concentration within the cell. This type of organization results directly from allosteric regulations of the key futile cycles of the cell energy metabolism such as substrate inhibition and product activation. These regulations switch the antagonist enzymes of the futile cycles on and off reciprocally to suppress recycling via self‐oscillatory changes in the enzyme activities. The deposition effect (E. E. Sel'kov, in: 8th FEBS Meeting, Vol. 25, pp. 145–161, H. C. Hemker and B. Hess, eds., North‐Holland, Amsterdam 1972) allows the oscillations on a circadian time scale.