Dynamical rate theory of enzymatic reactions and triple-resonant coherent anti-Stokes Raman scattering microspectroscopy

Wei Min

Chapters 2-7 focus on physical enzymology. Despite its long history, recent single-molecule spectroscopy, among many others techniques, has generated new quantitative data that reveal unobserved features of protein dynamics and enzyme catalysis at unprecedented levels. Much of these are beyond the classic framework of transition state theory and Michalis-Menten (MM) enzyme kinetics. Due to the complexity of the problem, theoretical developments in this area have much lagged behind experiments. After an initial experimental characterization on single-molecule protein conformational fluctuations, we then develop a dynamical rate theory for enzyme catalyzed chemical reactions, from a statistical mechanics approach. Towards this goal, we formulate a two-dimensional (2D) multi-surface free energy description of the entire catalytic process that explicitly combines the concept of...