Crapse J, Pappireddi N, Gupta M, Shvartsman SY, Wieschaus E, Wühr M.

Mol Syst Biol. 2021 Aug;17(8):e9895. doi: 10.15252/msb.20209895

Arrhenius equation for developmental processes.

Fitting development time courses at different temperatures to the Arrhenius law shows that different steps have different activation energies. The fit is not linear, and the fact that each step is a combination of many reactions is not enough to explain the extent of the deviation. In addition, the fit of simple reactions catalysed by GAPDH or LacZ is also non-linear. The authors postulate that “Either all rate-limiting steps occurring in parallel at a given embryonic stage have evolved similar activation energies, or the embryos have developed checkpoints that assure a resynchronization of converging developmental processes over wide temperature ranges.”