Biochemical switching device: biomimetic approach and application to neural network study.

There are many examples of enzymes that share substrates or cofactors in a cyclic manner. Techniques have been developed that use cyclic enzyme systems to assay quantitatively small amounts of biochemical substances (cofactor, substrate), however, only a few studies of the control of these systems have been published. The author previously showed with computer simulations that cyclic enzyme systems have the reliability of ON-OFF types of operation (McCulloch-Pitts' neuronic equation) capable of storing short-memory, and the applicability for a switching circuit in a biocomputer. This paper introduces a unique switching mechanism of cyclic enzyme system (basic switching element), and next, building the integrated biochemical switching system being composed of the basic switching element, shows the physiological phenomenon termed 'selective elimination of synapses' generally produced as a result of low-frequency train of electrical stimuli to the synapses (Kuroda, Y. 1989) Neurochem. Int. 14, 309-319).