The structure of metabolic systems: a theoretical approach.

A theoretical approach is presented to predict the structural design of enzymatic reaction systems. It is based on the hypothesis that the kinetic properties of enzymes and of other functionally important proteins have been optimized during evolution so that the contemporary cellular metabolic systems are operating at an optimal state. As simple but instructive example we consider the optimization of the stationary flux rate of a single enzyme. In contrast to previous studies a more realistic enzymatic rate equation has been chosen according to HALDANE's reaction scheme.