A FIRST APPROACH TO REACTION-KINETICS IN LARGE MOLECULES

We investigate a simple model of unimolecular reaction in a large mole cule. A reactive site, connected to a backbone, is subjected to fluctu ations coming simultaneously from a Markovian bath and from the therma lized dynamics of the backbone. The system can be exactly described by a generalized Langevin equation which allows us to predict semi-quant itatively the effects of changes in the backbone frequencies, which ar e observed by numerical calculations of the reaction rate, Our results also illustrate some limitations of the available theories to treat t he escape problem with colored noise in the context of biological reac tions. Copyright (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.