GLOBAL ANALYSIS OF ENZYME-INHIBITION KINETICS

Simple enzyme mechanisms are capable of a surprisingly rich variety of behavior. This paper presents a global analysis of this behavior for several inhibition mechanisms, For instance, in competitive inhibition one can vary the system parameters (typically total inhibitor concent ration); then the ordinary differential equations describing this mech anism can display two bifurcations which separate the relaxation behav ior into three distinct regimes. In one of these regimes, the usual st eady-state treatment does not describe the dynamics, even as a first a pproximation. These different classes of relaxation kinetics are analy zed in detail, and methods are presented for the extraction of the und erlying invariant manifold structure. The global analysis of three rel ated inhibition mechanisms is also discussed.