Nonclassical Chemical Kinetics for Description of Chemical Fluctuation in a Dynamically Heterogeneous Biological System

Abstract

We review novel chemical kinetics proposed for quantitative description of fluctuations in reaction times and in the number of product molecules in a heterogeneous biological system, and discuss quantitative interpretation of randomness parameter data in enzymatic turnover times of beta-galactosidase. We discuss generalization of renewal theory for description of chemical fluctuation in product level in a multistep biopolymer reaction occurring in a dynamically heterogeneous environment. New stochastic simulation results are presented for the chemical fluctuation of a dynamically heterogeneous reaction system, which clearly show the effects of the initial state distribution on the chemical fluctuation. Our stochastic simulation results are found to be in good agreement with predictions of the analytic results obtained from the generalized master equation.