Salm. Kooijman, THE SYNTHESIZING UNIT AS MODEL FOR THE STOICHIOMETRIC FUSION AND BRANCHING OF METABOLIC FLUXES, Biophysical chemistry, 73(1-2), 1998, pp. 179-188
The Synthesizing Unit (SU) binds given numbers of substrate molecules
of several types of substrate to produce a product molecule or set of
product molecules. Irreversible binding results in relatively simple a
nd explicit expressions for the rate of product formation. Reversible
binding can be implemented with relative ease in the carrier-SU comple
x, where the products of a set of carriers (a special type of SU) serv
e as substrate for an SU or set of SUs. A simple and parameter sparse
approximation is presented for the production rate of a generalized co
mpound, i.e. a rich mixture of compounds that does not change in compo
sition. An analysis of Droop's data on the growth of a haptophyte on p
hosphate and vitamin B-12 reserves illustrates the application of SUs.
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