Which of the terms below best describes a regulatory mechanism in which the end product of a metabolic pathway inhibits an enzyme that catalyzes an early step in the pathway?

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To tackle the question, I’ll evaluate what each term typically means in metabolic regulation.
Option 1: cooperative inhibition. This phrase isn’t a standard way to describe regulatory control in metabolic pathways. Cooperativity usually refers to enzymes whose activity changes as a function of substrate binding to multiple subunits (sigmoidal kinetics), not the end product feeding back to shut down an earlier step. So this is not the best descriptor for the described mechanism.
Option 2: feedback inhibition. This is the classic term for the described regulatory scheme: the end product of a pathway inhibits an enzyme that catalyzes an earlier step, forming a negative feedback loop that prevents overproduction. It directly matches the scenario in the question.
Option 3: allosteric inhibition. While many regulatory effects involve allosteric sites on enzymes, the question asks for the overall regulatory mechanism name. Allosteric inhibition is a mechanism by which an effector binds to a site other than the active site to regulate activity. Although feedback inhibition often operates allosterically, call­ing the mechanism by that broader term risks not capturing the conventional pathway-level description.
Option 4: competitive inhibition. Here, the inhibitor competes with the substrate for the active site. That describes a different mode of inhibition within a single enzymatic step rather than a regulatory loop where the pathway’s end product downregulates an earlier enzyme.
Option 5: metabolic inhibition. This term is not a standard label for the described control mechanism in biochemistry. It’s vague and not typically used to describe feedback regulation of a metabolic pathway.
In summary, the described end-product regulation of an early-step enzyme corresponds to the well-established concept known as feedback inhibition, with other options either describing different modes of inhibition or nonstandard terminology that does not capture the exact mechanism being asked about.

W25 BIOL D006B 01Y Cell & Molecular Biology Lecture Exam 1

Which of the terms below best describes a regulatory mechanism in which the end product of a metabolic pathway inhibits an enzyme that catalyzes an early step in the pathway?

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