Abstract

In 1913 Michaelis and Menten proposed a mechanism for an enzyme-catalyzed reaction which led - under suitable experimental settings - to a so-called quasi-steady state hypothesis which is widely used for parameter identification in experiments. Mathematically, this hypothesis turned out to be quite vexing. After the first mathematical formulation due to Briggs and Haldane (in 1925) it took several decades until Segel and Slemrod brought the matter to a preliminary closure in 1989. Recent work, using a different but elementary approach, succeeded in clarifying and correcting some points and answering some of the remaining open questions.