Michaelis-Menten Kinetics: A Universal Approach to First Passage under Stochastic Restart

In 1913 Michaelis & Menten published a seminal paper in which they presented a mathematical model of an enzymatic reaction and demonstrated how it can be utilized for the analysis and interpretation of kinetic data. More than a century later, the work of Michaelis & Menten is considered classic textbook material, and their reaction scheme is widely applied both in and out of its original context. At its very core, the scheme can be seen as one which describes a generic first passage time process that has further become subject to stochastic restart. This context free standpoint is not the standard one but I will explain how it has recently allowed us to treat a wide array of seemingly unrelated processes on equal footing, and how this treatment has unified, altered, and deepened our view on single-molecule enzymology, kinetic proof-reading and complex search processes. Newly opened opportunities for theoretical and experimental research will also be discussed.