A MEASURE OF THE AVERAGE COOPERATIVITY OF A BINDING SYSTEM

A new measure of the average cooperativity of a binding system is sugg ested. Existing measures, suggested earlier by Wyman, and by Minton an d Saroff, do not adequately account for all types of cooperativities i n systems with more than two binding sites. The newly suggested measur e captures the average cooperativity at any stage of the binding proce ss. It is shown that this average can change dramatically, even its si gn, during the span of a binding process. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-9606(98)00640-0].