Equilibrium concentrations for pyruvate dehydrogenase and the citric acid cycle at specified concentrations of certain coenzymes

It is of interest to calculate equilibrium compositions of systems of biochemical reactions at specified concentrations of coenzymes because these reactants tend to be in steady states. Thermodynamic calculations under these conditions require the definition of a further transformed Gibbs energy G" by use of a Legendre transform. These calculations are applied to the pyruvate dehydrogenase reaction plus the citric acid cycle, but steady-state concentrations of CoA, acetyl-CoA and succinyl-CoA cannot be specified because they are involved in the conservation of carbon atoms. These calculations require the use of linear algebra to obtain further transformed Gibbs energies of formation of reactants and computer programs to calculate equilibrium compositions. At specified temperature, pH, ionic strength and specified concentrations of several coenzymes, the equilibrium composition depends on the specified concentrations of the coenzymes and the initial amounts of reactants. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.