150 years of the mass action law

This year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the law of mass action. This law is often assumed to have been "there" forever, but it has its own history, background, and a definite starting point. The law has had an impact on chemistry, biochemistry, biomathematics, and systems biology t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PLoS computational biology 2015-01, Vol.11 (1), p.e1004012-e1004012
Main Authors: Voit, Eberhard O, Martens, Harald A, Omholt, Stig W
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biochemical Phenomena
Biology
Biology and Life Sciences
Chemical reactions
Chemistry
Chemists
Enzyme kinetics
Kinetics
Mathematical models
Models, Biological
Rites, ceremonies and celebrations
Systems Biology
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Summary:This year we celebrate the 150th anniversary of the law of mass action. This law is often assumed to have been "there" forever, but it has its own history, background, and a definite starting point. The law has had an impact on chemistry, biochemistry, biomathematics, and systems biology that is difficult to overestimate. It is easily recognized that it is the direct basis for computational enzyme kinetics, ecological systems models, and models for the spread of diseases. The article reviews the explicit and implicit role of the law of mass action in systems biology and reveals how the original, more general formulation of the law emerged one hundred years later ab initio as a very general, canonical representation of biological processes.
ISSN:1553-7358
1553-734X
1553-7358
DOI:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004012