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I am new to Biology and I am reading some papers about kinase proteins. I know what kinases do in the body. However, I found it hard to understand what are "kinetics". I googled this term but it seems it is a general term and I couldn't understand it.

I came across the following sentence in a paper, and I am not able to understand it:

"many substrates of a given kinase have similar temporal kinetics"

I know what "substrates" and "kinase" means. But I don't know what "temporal kinetics" means here.

I appreciate the chance if somebody let me know the meaning of "temporal kinetics".

Thanks

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    $\begingroup$ The word "temporal" is unusual and is superfluous as regards kinetics. Kinases are enzymes, catalysing reactions, so in this context kinetics (Greek kinetikos: moving, putting in motion) refers to enzyme kinetics — the study of the rate of chemical reactions in the specific case of those catalysed by enzymes. Studies involve examining the effect on the reaction rate (substrate converted in unit time) of concentration, temperature, time itself, type of substrate, regulatory molecules etc. They can be used to test models of enzyme mechanism and cellular function and in bioengineering. $\endgroup$
    – David
    Commented Jul 8, 2020 at 10:27
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    $\begingroup$ I have voted to close your question as it is very basic and is readily answerable from text books, even though you seem to have been unable to find it on the web. Here is a link to a section from a biochemistry textbook that provides an introductory, if mathematical, treatment of the topic. $\endgroup$
    – David
    Commented Jul 8, 2020 at 10:31

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Temporal kinetics does not refer to the kinetics of kinase phosphorylation reactions and, since it is not standard terminology, you likely wouldn’t find its meaning in any textbook.

The authors of the paper quoted in the question use the phrase temporal kinetics to describe the phosphorylation state of a proteome-wide selection of kinase substrates (ie phosphorylation sites in proteins) over time. The general idea is that since one kinase can phosphorylate many substrates, clustering substrates based on their temporal kinetics (ie the times at which they become phosphorylated or dephosphorylated) can help identify the kinase and signaling pathway involved.

Fig 6B in the paper (shown below), for example, illustrates how 3,178 phosphorylation sites can be clustered based on the time-course of their phosphorylation and/or dephosphorylation after treatment of mouse adipocytes with insulin. As discussed in the paper, each cluster can be associated with one or more kinases based on known kinase-substrate interactions.

enter image description here

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