Comments on Nonrenewal Statistics in the Catalytic Activity of Enzyme Molecules at Mesoscopic Concentrations

Abstract

It is well known in enzyme kinetics that the Michaelis-Menten (MM) equation is applicable only to enzymes in the steady state. We show that the result obtained in the previous work [Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 218301 (2011)] is inconsistent with the MM equation, not because the authors considered the enzyme system at mesoscopic concentrations but because they considered the enzyme system in the non-stationary state. The substrate concentration dependence of the mean turnover time is, in fact, consistent with the MM equation in the steady state, regardless of the number of enzymes in the system.