Many cellular reactions involve a reactant in solution binding to or dissociating from a reactant confined to a surface.
This is true as well for a BIAcore
TM, an optical biosensor that is widely used to study the interaction of biomolecules. In the flow cell of this instrument,
one of the reactants is immobilized on a flat sensor surface while the other reactant flows past the surface. Both diffusion
and convection play important roles in bringing the reactants into contact. Usually BIAcore
TM binding data are analyzed using well known expressions that are valid only in the reaction-limited case when the Damköhler
number Da is small. Asymptotic and singular perturbation techniques are used to analyze dissociation of the bound state when
Da is small and
O(1). Linear and nonlinear integral equations result from the analysis; explicit and asymptotic solutions are constructed for
physically realizable cases. In addition, effective rate constants are derived that illustrate the effects of transport on
the measured rate constants. All these expressions provide a direct way to estimate the rate constants from BIAcore
TM binding data.
Key words: Biomolecular reactions - Rate constants - Singular perturbations - Asymptotics - Integral equations
Received 11 May 1998 / Revised version: 29 March 1999