Reply to Comment on "Enhanced diffusion of enzymes that catalyze exothermic reactions"

Abstract

Catalytically active enzymes have recently been observed to exhibit enhanced diffusion. In a recent work [C. Riedel et al., Nature 517, 227 (2015)], it has been suggested that this phenomenon is correlated with the degree of exothermicity of the reaction, and a mechanism was proposed to explain the phenomenon based on channeling the released heat into the center of mass kinetic energy of the enzyme. I addressed this question by comparing four different mechanisms, and concluded that collective heating is the strongest candidate out of those four to explain the phenomenon, and in particular, several orders of magnitude stronger than the mechanism proposed by Riedel et al. In a recent preprint (arXiv:1608.05433), K. Tsekouras, C. Riedel, R. Gabizon, S. Marqusee, S. Presse, and C. Bustamante present a comment on my paper [R. Golestanian, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 108102 (2015); arXiv:1508.03219], which I address here in this reply.