Question

Describe how feedback inhibition would work to allosterically inhibit a metabolic pathway.

Answer 1

Feedback inhibition involves the inactivation of an enzyme, involved in the formation of product, by the end product of the pathway. Enzymes have active sites for binding with their respective substrates, but they also possess another site, different from active site, where inhibitor (end product) binds and brings conformational changes in enzyme structure so that enzyme is no longer able to bind its substrate.

Enzyme of such mechanism of feedback inhibition in a metabolic pathway is glycolysis where ATP (chemical form of energy) is the end product that binds to the enzymes pyruvate kinase and phosphofructokinase, rendering them inactive.