New Mechanism for the Control of Cellular Reactions: the Biochemical Flip-flop

Abstract

IN a complex biological interaction, of the enzyme–substrate type, the enzyme may be considered to be formally analogous to a quantum “measuring apparatus” and the substrate to a collection of observables which characterize the substrate. When a “perturbation” is induced in such a system, the “perturbed” values of the substrate observables will be recorded by the respective “measuring apparatus”. Thus a new type of interaction may be formally derived: the interaction between a “perturbed” substrate, S^*, and the corresponding unperturbed enzyme¹.