In article <3366F6E3.DB6 at ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr>, Athel <athel at IR2CBM.CNRS-
MRS.FR> writes
>>then it seems to me Kacser, himself, provided the required proof."
>>paper as you do. However, Kacser himself always attached far more
>importance to the two numbered points ("The step nearest to equilibrium
>is not necessarily the least sensitive to control" and "the step most
>out of equilibrium is not necessarily the most sensitive to control")
>than I would do. I read his "not necessarily" as just that, but I always
>felt from talking with him that he meant it more as "not necessarily,
>nor even usually". However, I'm basing this more on conversation than on
>what the paper says, and others may have different experiences or
>interpretations.
I am sure the reason he said this was because the result only applied to
special circumstances i.e when the elasticities are a function of only
the state of equilibrium and are not influenced by the extend of
saturation. As I mentioned in a previous post one can construct pathways
where near-equilibrium steps have the greatest control. The real
question is, when or how often do these situations occur in real
systems?
>>The question of why metabolic control analysis continues to attract
>almost zero interest in the USA continues to be a mystery. Can you shed
>any light on this, Bob?
I think it is simply because the time is not right. Biochemists and
molecular biologists are still in the stamp collecting phase of their
science and I think they probably feel that theory at this stage is
irrelevant. Things will inevitably change once they stop collecting and
with the influx of money and numerate people into bioinformatics there
will be bound to be a small percentage who start thinking along our
lines and may even reinvent the wheel along the way.
We say that there isn't much discussion of MCA/BST in the US but if you
think about there isn't really much over here either. And certainly
there are no grants over here for it. I don't know what the status of
MCA is these days but there can't be many people working on it even in
Europe, either from an experimental point of view or theory.
Out of interest how many groups are there actually working on MCA
(theory of experiment) in the UK? Two? Three?
>>Athel
Herbert
--
Herbert M Sauro
email: HSauro at fssc.demon.co.uk
Telephone: 01974 282428
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
"He who cannot draw on 3000 years is living from hand to mouth" Goethe
"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
R Browning.
