October 28, 2013 5:55 pm
I've written a few articles on this blog about the irrationality of bottlenecks and slow steps in metabolism, hoping that one day my fellow scientists will feel the same. Sadly it is not true and maybe I should write more because I week or two ago I came from a talk about metabolic engineering which made some egregious statements that I wouldn't even expect my undergraduates to make. Apparently *the* bottleneck (note singular) in a metabolic pathway is the 'slowest' step and that's the one to engineer. I should add that this not quite right. Unfortunately I've no idea what they meant by the slowest step and I didn't have the heart to ask them given how lost they were. If I did ask, I suspect they'd become even more confused.
I think its time to write a blog on "What's the deal with slow steps"'
