Critical issues in molecular recognition: the enzyme–substrate association

Abstract

Chemical and shape recognition are the main assembling mechanisms of complex bio-structures. A refined assessment of relevant thermodynamic parameters includes the consideration of a variety of contributions from different molecular motions and electronic interactions. An additional refinement includes the analysis of recognition involving multiple distant partners. This perspective note highlights some of the above issues in the cases of fibrillogenesis, and enzyme–substrate and antigen–antibody associations. Translational motions are found to be particularly relevant to the fibrillogenesis process. The assembly of enzyme–substrate complexes is discussed in terms of a dynamic equilibrium process.