FIG 4.

The model predicts a linear relationship between the reaction rate (β) and the efficiency (ε) of an enzyme as long as conditions are under saturation. The faster an enzyme carries out the catalytic reaction, the more efficiently it produces monomers. Each point is based on published data on prokaryotic enzyme kinetics (see the references in Table 2). This illustrates the impact of the enzyme reaction rate and how difficult it is to parameterize.