Descriptors of Secondary Active Transporter Function and How They Relate to Partial Reactions in the Transport Cycle

Plasmalemmal solute carriers (SLCs) gauge and control solute abundance across cellular membranes. By virtue of this action, they play an important role in numerous physiological processes. Mutations in genes encoding the SLCs alter amino acid sequence that often leads to impaired protein function and onset of monogenic disorders. To understand how these altered proteins cause disease, it is necessary to undertake relevant functional assays. These experiments reveal descriptors of SLC function such as the maximal transport velocity (V_max), the Michaelis constant for solute uptake (K_M), potencies for inhibition of transporter function (IC₅₀/EC₅₀), and many more. In several instances, the mutated versions of different SLC transporters differ from their wild-type counterparts in the value of these descriptors. While determination of these experimental parameters can provide conjecture as to how the mutation gives rise to disease, they seldom provide any definitive insights on how a variant differ from the wild-type transporter in its operation. This is because the experimental determination of association between values of the descriptors and several partial reactions a transporter undergoes is casual, but not causal, at best. In the present study, we employ kinetic models that allow us to derive explicit mathematical terms and provide experimental descriptors as a function of the rate constants used to parameterize the kinetic model of the transport cycle. We show that it is possible to utilize these mathematical expressions to deduce, from experimental outcomes, how the mutation has impinged on partial reactions in the transport cycle.