Thomas Höfer

“ Instead of postulating a single rate-limiting step, Reinhart's and Henrik Kacser's theories evaluated the degree of flux control exerted by an individual enzyme in a linear pathway or in a more complex network. The corresponding measure—termed flux control coefficient—turned out to be a truly systemic quantity, depending not only on the kinetic parameters of the enzyme itself but also on those of other enzymes, as well as on the position of the reaction in the network. Several years after its original publication, metabolic control theory became widely absorbed by biochemists. ”

“ Control coefficients have been measured for many pathways, confirming the theoretical prediction that flux control is frequently shared by several reactions. This finding has recently become of very practical importance for the genetic engineering of large metabolic networks in biotechnology.The dual approach—modeling concrete cellular processes and, at the same time, searching for general laws—has been a characteristic of Reinhart's work. ”

“ The areas he worked in were amazingly diverse, including metabolic control, osmoregulation, cell shapes, signal transduction, vesicular transport, protein translation and transport, as well as the population dynamics of malaria parasites.Perhaps his most favored questions were those of evolution. ”