Quasi-steady state reduction for the Michaelis-Menten reaction-diffusion system

Abstract

The Michaelis-Menten mechanism is probably the best known model for an enzyme-catalyzed reaction. For spatially homogeneous concentrations, QSS reductions are well known, but this is not the case when chemical species are allowed to diffuse. We will discuss QSS reductions for both the irreversible and reversible Michaelis-Menten reaction in the latter case, given small initial enzyme concentration and slow diffusion. Our work is based on a heuristic method to obtain an ordinary differential equation which admits reduction by Tikhonov-Fenichel theory. We will not give convergence proofs but we provide numerical results that support the accuracy of the reductions.