Temperature effects on enzyme-catalyzed reactions within a cell: Monte Carlo simulations for coupled reaction and diffusion

We report Monte Carlo simulations of temperature effects on single-step enzymatic reactions with varied rate constants and diffusion coefficients. For typical systems, where the intrinsic reaction rate is more sensitive to temperature than diffusion, the overall reaction is rate-limited at low temperatures and diffusion-limited at high temperatures. The effective activation energy shifts to a much lower value as temperature is increased. Our results show that the temperature dependence of enzyme-catalyzed reactions within a cell may be only loosely related to a potential energy barrier height. The effective activation energy may be strongly affected by coupling of reaction and diffusion.