The ubiquitous biochemical logic of murburn concept

Abstract

In peroxidative biotransformations, reactions occurring outside the enzyme’s “active site” were seen to yield selective and specific outcomes. These observations had inspired me then to postulate that “such a non-active site and environment-dependent mechanism could play significant roles in life-sustenance processes, besides the well-established hierarchical molecular control mechanisms at genes’ and proteins’ levels”. Through the decade that followed, further research on these strings culminated into the formation of murburn concept, a stochastic scheme of electron/moiety transfers and interactions among molecules, unbound ions and radicals present in reaction milieu. The new understanding explained key qualitative and quantitative aspects of heme/flavin enzymology (substrate diversity, reaction stoichiometry, etc.) and electron transfer mechanism in these enzymes’ in vitro setups. Further, murburn schemes were proposed to explain xenobiotic metabolism, cellular respiration, bio-thermogenesis and maverick physiological dose-responses. This article deals with a brief summation of the development of murburn concept, its current status and potential implications/applications in biology and medicine.