Dynamic stability and thermodynamic characterization in an enzymatic reaction at the single molecule level

In this work we study, at the single molecular level, the thermodynamic and dynamic characteristics of an enzymatic reaction comprising a rate limiting step. We investigate how the stability of the enzyme-state stationary probability distribution, the reaction velocity, and its efficiency of energy conversion depend on the system parameters. We employ in this study a recently introduced formalism for performing a multiscale thermodynamic analysis in continuous-time discrete-state stochastic systems. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.