A brief history of the development of the contemporary model for the mechanism of
prothrombin activation is presented.The focus is on the advances in understanding
structure-function relationships in the molecules that comprise “prothrombinase” that
occurred primarily during the 1970s. A link between the “classical theory” of hemostasis
and the conceptual development of activation complexes as the activators of the precursors
of coagulation proteases is developed. It is argued that advances occurred when new
ideas arose that could be tested and new technologies enabled more definitive experiments
to be performed.
Keywords
Prothrombinase - prothrombin - structure-function - coagulation models - models -
history