Chemo-Mechanically Regulated Oscillation of an Enzymatic Reaction

A necessity of all living organisms from prokaryotes tomammals is the capability to respond rapidly to a changing environment via a variety of adaptive mechanisms. At the core of this adaptive nature are hierarchical signaling cascades that allow the organism to transform a stimulus signal into a variety of outputsoften visible or otherwise detectable readouts (color change, movement, etc.).1 Essential to these functions are sophisticated receptors that freely transduce chemical and mechanical as well as other types of energy. These mechano-chemical interconversions occur at various length scales, from the nanoscale (e.g., ribosomal procession along an mRNA strand, F1-ATPase)2 to the microscale (e.g., flagellar motors, hair cells)3,4 and even the macroscale (e.g., muscle movement by myocyte action).5 In contrast to nature’s highly integrated and versatile cascades allowing transitions between biochemical and