From owner-metabolic-reg@net.bio.net Mon Feb 10 22:00:00 1997 Path: biosci!IR2CBM.CNRS-MRS.FR!athel From: athel@IR2CBM.CNRS-MRS.FR (Athel) Newsgroups: bionet.metabolic-reg Subject: Re: MCA for chemistry Date: 11 Feb 1997 04:46:00 -0800 Organization: CNRS Lines: 39 Sender: daemon@net.bio.net Distribution: world Message-ID: <33005DB8.D1F@ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr> Reply-To: athel@ir2cbm.cnrs-mrs.fr NNTP-Posting-Host: net.bio.net Guy Brown asked: Now my question is "Is there already an MCA for chemistry, and if not would it be useful?" If anyone else has asked this question I would have answered that Guy's own papers on molecular control analysis (as well as others from Hans Westerhoff, and, some time ago, Bill Ray) already provided this, but given that the question is from Guy he presumably means something more. My feeling is that chemists already have the sort of tools they need to answer the sort of questions they ask (which are not, on the whole the same questions that biochemists ask -- have you ever looked at a book on enzymes written by and for chemists?). In other words, I don't believe that most chemists are very interested in knowing how much rate control resides in each step. They may talk occasionally about rate-limiting steps, but in general they are more interested in mechanism. Even some biochemists think that investigating mechanism is the only valid reason for studying kinetics at all. (I don't know if Gosta Pettersson looks at this news group. Probably not, but if he does he will be saying YES YES YES at this point). Of course, I don't agree with this, and think that one of the great merits of metabolic control analysis is that it treats mechanism as a black box. But I suspect that extremely few chemists will see any virtue in treating mechanism as a black box, so I don't hold out much hope that Guy's paper, if he writes it, will be received with much warmth by a journal intended primarily for chemists. Nothing to do with this, but Guy also wrote "(I do not know where all these w-words came from)": I once saw a short play in which the *entire* dialogue was in words beginning with w. A short sample that I happen to remember: "We'll wed, William." "When, Wanda?", "Wednesday; where?" "Welshpool". Not quite Shakespeare, I agree, but I doubt whether it would even be possible to do this with any letter but w. Athel Home page: http://ir2lcb.cnrs-mrs.fr/lcbpage/athel/home_page.html MCA FAQ: http://ir2lcb.cnrs-mrs.fr/lcbpage/athel/mcafaq.html MCA chapter from my book: http://ir2lcb.cnrs-mrs.fr/lcbpage/athel/fek10/mcai.html .