Theoretical insights in enzyme catalysis
In this tutorial review we show how the methods and techniques of computational chemistry have been applied to the understanding of the physical basis of the rate enhancement of chemical reactions by enzymes. This is to answer the question: Why is the activation free energy in enzyme catalysed reactions smaller than the activation free energy observed in solution? Two important points of view are presented: Transition State (TS) theories and Michaelis Complex (MC) theories. After reviewing some of the most popular computational methods employed, we analyse two particular enzymatic reactions: the conversion of chorismate to prephenate catalysed by Bacillus subtilis chorismate mutase, and a m…
Calculation of binding energy using BLYP/MM for the HIV-1 integrase complexed with the S-1360 and two analogues.
Abstract Integrase (IN) is one of the three human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) enzymes essential for effective viral replication. S-1360 is a potent and selective inhibitor of HIV-1 IN. In this work, we have carried out molecular dynamics (MD) simulations using a hybrid Quantum Mechanics/Molecular Mechanics (QM/MM) approach, to determine the protein–ligand interaction energy for S-1360 and two analogues. Analysis of the MD trajectories reveals that the strongest protein–inhibitor interactions, observed in the three studied complexes, are established with Lys-159 residue and Mg 2+ cation. Calculations of binding energy using BLYP/MM level of theory reveal that there is a direct rela…
Peptide Bond Formation Mechanism Catalyzed by Ribosome
In this paper we present a study of the peptide bond formation reaction catalyzed by ribosome. Different mechanistic proposals have been explored by means of Free Energy Perturbation methods within hybrid QM/MM potentials, where the chemical system has been described by the M06-2X functional and the environment by means of the AMBER force field. According to our results, the most favorable mechanism in the ribosome would proceed through an eight-membered ring transition state, involving a proton shuttle mechanism through the hydroxyl group of the sugar and a water molecule. This transition state is similar to that described for the reaction in solution (J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 8708–871…
Computational design of biological catalysts
The purpose of this tutorial review is to illustrate the way to design new and powerful catalysts. The first possibility to get a biological catalyst for a given chemical process is to use existing enzymes that catalyze related reactions. The second possibility is the use of immune systems that recognize stable molecules resembling the transition structure of the target reaction. We finally show how computational techniques are able to provide an enormous quantity of information, providing clues to guide the development of new biological catalysts
The catalytic mechanism of glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase from Trypanosoma cruzi elucidated via the QM/MM approach
Glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) has been identified as a key enzyme involved in glycolysis processes for energy production in the Trypanosoma cruzi parasite. This enzyme catalyses the oxidative phosphorylation of glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate (G3P) in the presence of inorganic phosphate (Pi) and nicotinamide adenosine dinucleotide (NAD+). The catalytic mechanism used by GAPDH has been intensively investigated. However, the individual roles of Pi and the C3 phosphate of G3P (Ps) sites, as well as some residues such as His194 in the catalytic mechanism, remain unclear. In this study, we have employed Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations within hybrid quantum mechanical/molecular …
Preorganization and reorganization as related factors in enzyme catalysis: the chorismate mutase case.
In this paper a deeper insight into the chorismate-to prephenate-rearrangement, catalyzed by Bacillus subtilis chorismate mutase, is provided by means of a combination of statistical quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics simulation methods and hybrid potential energy surface exploration techniques. The main aim of this work is to present an estimation of the preorganization and reorganization terms of the enzyme catalytic rate enhancement. To analyze the first of these, we have studied different conformational equilibria of chorismate in aqueous solution and in the enzyme active site. Our conclusion is that chorismate mutase preferentially binds the reactive conformer of the substrate--that…
Theoretical study of the temperature dependence of dynamic effects in thymidylate synthase.
A theoretical study of the temperature dependence of dynamic effects in the rate limiting step of the reaction catalyzed by thymidylate synthase is presented in this paper. From hybrid Quantum Mechanics/Molecular Mechanics (QM/MM) optimizations of transition state structures within a fully flexible molecular model, free downhill molecular dynamics trajectories have been performed at four different temperatures. The analysis of the reactive and non-reactive trajectories in the enzyme environment has allowed us to study the geometric and electronic coupling between the substrate, the cofactor and the protein. The results show how the contribution of dynamic effects to the rate enhancement mea…
A quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics study of the protein-ligand interaction for inhibitors of HIV-1 integrase.
Human immunodeficiency virus type-1 integrase (HIV-1 IN) is an essential enzyme for effective viral replication. Diketo acids such as L-731,988 and S-1360 are potent and selective inhibitors of HIV-1 IN. In this study, we used molecular dynamics simulations, within the hybrid quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) approach, to determine the protein-ligand interaction energy between HIV-1 IN and L-731,988 and 10 of its derivatives and analogues. This hybrid methodology has the advantage that it includes quantum effects such as ligand polarisation upon binding, which can be very important when highly polarisable groups are embedded in anisotropic environments, as for example in metal-c…
QM/MM calculations of kinetic isotope effects in the chorismate mutase active site.
Kinetic isotope effects have been computed for the Claisen rearrangement of chorismate to prephenate in aqueous solution and in the active site of chorismate mutase from B. subtilus. These included primary 13C and 18O and secondary 3H effects for substitutions at the bond-making and bond-breaking positions. The initial structures of the putative stationary points on the potential energy surface, required for the calculations of isotope effects using the CAMVIB/CAMISO programs, have been selected from hybrid QM/MM molecular dynamical simulations using the DYNAMO program. Refinement of the reactant complex and transition-state structures has been carried out by means of AM1/CHARMM24/TIP3P cal…
Application of Grote-Hynes theory to the reaction catalyzed by thymidylate synthase.
A theoretical study of dynamic effects on the rate-limiting step of the thymidylate synthase catalyzed reaction has been carried out by means of Grote-Hynes theory, successfully predicting the values of the recrossing effects for a chemical reaction that involves the transfer of a classical light particle. The transmission coefficients, obtained at 278, 293, 303, and 313 K, are almost invariant and in all cases far from unity, revealing a significant coupling of the environment motions and the reaction coordinate. Nevertheless, their energetic contribution to the activation free energy represents less than 0.50 kcal/mol for each of the four tested temperatures. Calculation of the transmissi…
Do zwitterionic species exist in the non-enzymatic peptide bond formation?
The use of proper computational methods and models has allowed answering the controversial question of whether zwitterionic species exist in the mechanism of peptide bond synthesis in aqueous solution. In fact, the different conformations of zwitterionic species open the door to different mechanistic paths.
Hybrid Quantum Mechanics/Molecular Mechanics Simulations with Two-Dimensional Interpolated Corrections: Application to Enzymatic Processes
Hybrid quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) techniques are widely used to study chemical reactions in large systems. Because of the computational cost associated with the high dimensionality of these systems, the quantum description is usually restricted to low-level methods, such as semiempirical Hamiltonians. In some cases, the description obtained at this computational level is quite poor and corrections must be considered. We here propose a simple but efficient way to include higher-level corrections to be used in potential energy surface explorations and in the calculation of potentials of mean force. We evaluate a correction energy term as the difference between a high-level …
Protein Conformational Landscapes and Catalysis. Influence of Active Site Conformations in the Reaction Catalyzed by L-Lactate Dehydrogenase
In the past decade, L-Lactate Dehydrogenase (LDH) has become an extremely useful marker in both clinical diagnosis and in monitoring the course of many human diseases. It has been assumed since the 1980s that the full catalytic process of LDH starts with the binding of the cofactor and the substrate followed by the enclosure of the active site by a mobile loop of the protein before the reaction takes place. In this paper, we show that the chemical step of the LDH-catalyzed reaction can proceed within the open loop conformation, and the different reactivity of the different protein conformations would be in agreement with the broad range of rate constants measured in single-molecule spectrom…
Conformational equilibrium of chorismate. A QM/MM theoretical study combining statistical simulations and geometry optimisations in gas phase and in aqueous solution
We report a theoretical study on the conformational equilibrium of chorismate that precedes its rearrangement to prephenate, an important enzyme-catalyzed reaction. In first place we show that the usual classification of chorismate conformers based on the relative position of the hydroxyl and ether bridge, pseudo-diaxial and pseudo-diequatorial, is not the only relevant factor from the point of view of the a posteriori rearrangement. Here we also analyse another complementary geometrical classification based on the interatomic distance between the carbon atoms to be bounded. Using the umbrella sampling approach and this distance as distinguished internal reaction coordinate, the gas phase A…
Increased dynamic effects in a catalytically compromised variant of Escherichia coli dihydrofolate reductase
Isotopic substitution (15N, 13C, 2H) of a catalytically compromised variant of Escherichia coli dihydrofolate reductase, EcDHFR-N23PP/S148A, has been used to investigate the effect of these mutations on catalysis. The reduction of the rate constant of the chemical step in the EcDHFR-N23PP/S148A catalyzed reaction is essentially a consequence of an increase of the quasi-classical free energy barrier and to a minor extent of an increased number of recrossing trajectories on the transition state dividing surface. Since the variant enzyme is less well set up to catalyze the reaction, a higher degree of active site reorganization is needed to reach the TS. Although millisecond active site motion…
An AM1 theoretical study on the effect of Zn2+ Lewis acid catalysis on the mechanism of the cycloaddition between 3-phenyl-1-(2-pyridyl)-2-propen-1-one and cyclopentadiene
Abstract The mechanism of the Diels–Alder reaction between 3-phenyl-1-(2-pyridyl)-2-propen-1-one and cyclopentadiene has been investigated with the AM1 semiempirical method. Stationary points for two reactive channels, endo - cis and exo - cis , have been characterized. The role of the Lewis acid catalyst has been modeled taking into account the formation of a complex between Zn 2+ and the carbonyl oxygen atom and the pyridyl nitrogen atom of the 3-phenyl-1-(2-pyridyl)-2-propen-1-one system with and without the presence of two molecules of water around the cation. The mechanism of the uncatalyzed reaction corresponds to a concerted process, but in the presence of Lewis acid catalyst the mec…
Improving the QM/MM Description of Chemical Processes: A Dual Level Strategy To Explore the Potential Energy Surface in Very Large Systems.
Potential energy surfaces are fundamental tools for the analysis of reaction mechanisms. The accuracy of these surfaces for reactions in very large systems is often limited by the size of the system even if hybrid quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) strategies are employed. The large number of degrees of freedom of the system requires hundreds or even thousands of optimization steps to reach convergence. Reactions in condensed media (such as enzymes or solutions) are thus usually restricted to be analyzed using low level quantum mechanical methods, thus introducing a source of error in the description of the QM region. In this paper, an alternative method is proposed, coupled to t…
Computing kinetic isotope effects for chorismate mutase with high accuracy. A new DFT/MM strategy.
A novel procedure has been applied to compute experimentally unobserved intrinsic kinetic isotope effects upon the rearrangement of chorismate to prephenate catalyzed by B. subtilis chorismate mutase. In this modified QM/MM approach, the "low-level" QM description of the quantum region is corrected during the optimization procedure by means of a "high-level" calculation in vacuo, keeping the QM-MM interaction contribution at a quantum "low-level". This allows computation of energies, gradients, and Hessians including the polarization of the QM subsystem and its interaction with the MM environment, both terms calculated using the low-level method at a reasonable computational cost. New infor…
Hybrid Schemes Based on Quantum Mechanics/Molecular Mechanics Simulations
The development of characterization techniques, advanced synthesis methods, as well as molecular modeling has transformed the study of systems in a well-established research field. The current research challenges in biocatalysis and biotransformation evolve around enzyme discovery, design, and optimization. How can we find or create enzymes that catalyze important synthetic reactions, even reactions that may not exist in nature? What is the source of enzyme catalytic power? To answer these and other related questions, the standard strategies have evolved from trial-and-error methodologies based on chemical knowledge, accumulated experience, and common sense into a clearly multidisciplinary …
Towards a Rational Design of Antibody Catalysts through Computational Chemistry
A Collective Coordinate to Obtain Free Energy Profiles for Complex Reactions in Condensed Phases.
Exploration of chemical reactions in complex explicit environments has become an affordable task with the use of hybrid quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics potentials which allow calculating free energy profiles of chemical reactions under the influence of the surroundings. Tracing these free energy profiles requires the selection of a reaction coordinate, which can be cumbersome for those processes involving more than a single chemical event in a concerted step. We here propose a collective coordinate to be used in the calculation of free energy profiles for complex reactions in condensed phases. This coordinate is based in the definition of the advance along a path introduced by Brandua…
Are Heme-Dependent Enzymes Always Using a Redox Mechanism? A Theoretical Study of the Kemp Elimination Catalyzed by a Promiscuous Aldoxime Dehydratase
The design of biocatalysts is a goal to improve the rate, selectivity and environmental friendship of chemical processes in biotechnology. In this regard, the use of computational techniques has provided valuable assistance in the design of enzymes with remarkable catalytic activity. In this paper, hybrid QM/MM simulations have allowed getting an insight into the mechanism of a promiscuous aldoxime dehydratase (OxdA) for the Kemp elimination. We first demonstrate that, based on the use of linear response approximation (LRA) methods, the lowest energy electronic state of the benzisoxazole placed in the active sit of OxdA corresponds to a singlet state, being the triplet and the quintet state…
ChemInform Abstract: Computational Design of Biological Catalysts
The purpose of this tutorial review is to illustrate the way to design new and powerful catalysts. The first possibility to get a biological catalyst for a given chemical process is to use existing enzymes that catalyze related reactions. The second possibility is the use of immune systems that recognize stable molecules resembling the transition structure of the target reaction. We finally show how computational techniques are able to provide an enormous quantity of information, providing clues to guide the development of new biological catalysts.
Understanding the different activities of highly promiscuous MbtI by computational methods
Salicylate synthase from Mycobacterium tuberculosis, MbtI, is a highly promiscuous Mg(2+) dependent enzyme with up to four distinct activities detected in vitro: isochorismate synthase (IS), isochorismate pyruvate lyase (IPL), salicylate synthase (SS) and chorismate mutase (CM). In this paper, Molecular Dynamic (MD) simulations employing hybrid quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) potentials have been carried out to get a detailed knowledge of the IS and the IPL activities at the molecular level. According to our simulations, the architecture of the MbtI active site allows catalyzing the two reactions: the isochorismate formation, by means of a stepwise mechanism, and the salicylat…
A Novel Strategy to Study Electrostatic Effects in Chemical Reactions: Differences between the Role of Solvent and the Active Site of Chalcone Isomerase in a Michael Addition
The electrostatic behavior of active site residues in enzyme catalysis is quite different from that of water molecules in solution. To highlight the electrostatic differences between both environments, we propose a QM/MM strategy to study the role of the environment in chemical reactions. The novelty of the present communication is that free energy surfaces are generated by means of two distinguished reaction coordinates: a solute coordinate and the electrostatic potential created by the environment. This is applied to analyze the origin of catalysis in the transformation of a chalcone into a flavanone, a Michael addition that requires the desolvation of the nucleophile.
Analysis of the Decarboxylation Step in Mammalian Histidine Decarboxylase
We report a hybrid quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics theoretical study on the reaction mechanism of mammalian histidine decarboxylase that allows us to obtain valuable insights on the structure of the cofactor-substrate adduct (external aldimine) in the active site of rat histidine decarboxylase. By means of molecular dynamics simulations, we traced the potential of mean force corresponding to the decarboxylation reaction of the adduct both in the active site of the enzyme and in aqueous solution. By comparing this process in both media, we have identified the key electrostatic interactions that explain the lowering of the free energy barrier in the enzyme. Our analysis also offers a va…
Molecular Mechanism of the site-specific self-cleavage of the RNA phosphodiester backbone by a Twister Ribozyme
Published as part of the special collection of articles derived from the 10th Congress on Electronic Structure: Principles and Applications (ESPA-2016). The catalytic activity of some classes of natural RNA, named as ribozymes, has been discovered just in the past decades. In this paper, the cleavage of the RNA phosphodiester backbone has been studied in aqueous solution and in a twister ribozyme from Oryza sativa. The free energy profiles associated with a baseline substrate-assisted mechanism for the reaction in the enzyme and in solution were computed by means of free energy perturbation methods within hybrid QM/MM potentials, describing the chemical system by the M06-2× functional and t…
Theoretical Study of Catalytic Efficiency of a Diels–Alderase Catalytic Antibody: An Indirect Effect Produced During the Maturation Process
The Diels–Alder reaction is one of the most important and versatile transformations available to organic chemists for the construction of complex natural products, therapeutics agents, and synthetic materials. Given the lack of efficient enzymes capable of catalyzing this kind of reaction, it is of interest to ask whether a biological catalyst could be designed from an antibody-combining site. In the present work, a theoretical study of the different behavior of a germline catalytic antibody (CA) and its matured form, 39 A-11, that catalyze a Diels–Alder reaction has been carried out. A free-energy perturbation technique based on a hybrid quantum-mechanics/molecular-mechanics scheme, togeth…
Transition structure selectivity in enzyme catalysis: a QM/MM study of chorismate mutase
Two different transition structures (TSs) have been located and characterized for the chorismate conversion to prephenate in Bacillus subtilis chorismate mutase by means of hybrid quantum-mechanical/molecular-mechanical (QM/MM) calculations. GRACE software, combined with an AM1/CHARMM24/TIP3P potential, has been used involving full gradient relaxation of the position of ca. 3300 atoms. These TSs have been connected with their respective reactants and products by the intrinsic reaction coordinate (IRC) procedure carried out in the presence of the protein environment, thus obtaining for the first time a realistic enzymatic reaction path for this reaction. Similar QM/MM computational schemes h…
A Quantum Mechanic/Molecular Mechanic Study of the Wild-Type and N155S Mutant HIV-1 Integrase Complexed with Diketo Acid
Integrase (IN) is one of the three human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) enzymes essential for effective viral replication. Recently, mutation studies have been reported that have shown that a certain degree of viral resistance to diketo acids (DKAs) appears when some amino acid residues of the IN active site are mutated. Mutations represent a fascinating experimental challenge, and we invite theoretical simulations for the disclosure of still unexplored features of enzyme reactions. The aim of this work is to understand the molecular mechanisms of HIV-1 IN drug resistance, which will be useful for designing anti-HIV inhibitors with unique resistance profiles. In this study, we use mo…
Enzyme molecular mechanism as a starting point to design new inhibitors: a theoretical study of O-GlcNAcase.
O-Glycoprotein 2-acetamino-2-deoxy-β-d-glucopyranosidase (O-GlcNAcase) hydrolyzes O-linked 2-acetamido-2-deoxy-β-d-glucopyranoside (O-GlcNAc) residues from post-translationally modified serine/threonine residues of nucleocytoplasmic protein. The chemical process involves substrate-assisted catalysis, where two aspartate residues have been identified as the two key catalytic residues of O-GlcNAcase. In this report, the first step of the catalytic mechanism used by O-GlcNAcase involving substrate-assisted catalysis has been studied using a hybrid quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) Molecular Dynamics (MD) calculations. The free energy profile shows that the formation of the oxazol…
Studying the role of protein dynamics in an SN2 enzyme reaction using free-energy surfaces and solvent coordinates
Conformational changes are known to be able to drive an enzyme through its catalytic cycle, allowing, for example, substrate binding or product release. However, the influence of protein motions on the chemical step is a controversial issue. One proposal is that the simple equilibrium fluctuations incorporated into transition-state theory are insufficient to account for the catalytic effect of enzymes and that protein motions should be treated dynamically. Here, we propose the use of free-energy surfaces, obtained as a function of both a chemical coordinate and an environmental coordinate, as an efficient way to elucidate the role of protein structure and motions during the reaction. We sho…
Role of Solvent on Nonenzymatic Peptide Bond Formation Mechanisms and Kinetic Isotope Effects
Based on the hypothesis that similar mechanisms are involved in the peptide bond formation in aqueous solution and in the ribosome, the aminolysis of esters in aqueous solution has been the subject of numerous studies as the reference reaction for the catalyzed process. The mechanisms proposed in the literature have been explored in the present paper by hybrid QM/MM molecular dynamics simulations. The free energy profiles have been computed with the QM region of the system described at semiempirical AM1 level and by DFT within the M06-2X functional. According to the results, the formation of adduct zwitterion species is a preliminary step required for all possible mechanisms. Then, from dif…
Computational Modeling of Biological Systems: The LDH Story
Lactate dehydrogenases, LDH, catalyzed reaction has been used in this chapter as a conductor wire to present the evolution and difficulties on computing methods to model chemical reactions in enzymes, since the early calculations based at semiempirical level carried out in gas phase to the recent sophisticated simulations based on hybrid Quantum Mechanical/Molecular Mechanics Dynamics (QM/MM MD) schemes. LDH catalyzes the reversible transformation of pyruvate into lactate. The chemical step consists in a hydride and a proton transfer from the cofactor (NADH) and a protonated histidine (His195), respectively. This fact has generated a lot of controversy about the timing of both transfers in …
Theoretical Study of Primary Reaction of Pseudozyma antarctica Lipase B as the Starting Point To Understand Its Promiscuity
Pseudozyma antarctica lipase B (PALB) is a serine hydrolase that catalyzes the hydrolysis of carboxylic acid esters in aqueous medium but it has also shown catalytic activity for a plethora of reactions. This promiscuous activity has found widespread applications. In the present paper, the primary reaction of PALB, its native hydrolytic activity, has been studied using hybrid quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) potentials. Free energy surfaces, obtained from QM/MM Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations, show that the reaction takes place by means of a multi-step mechanism where the first step, the activation of the carbonyl group of the substrate and the nucleophilic attack of Ser1…
Theoretical studies of HIV-1 reverse transcriptase inhibition
Computational methods for accurately calculating the binding affinity of a ligand for a protein play a pivotal role in rational drug design. We herein present a theoretical study of the binding of five different ligands to one of the proteins responsible for the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) cycle replication; the HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT). Two types of approaches are used based on molecular dynamics (MD) simulations within hybrid QM/MM potentials: the alchemical free energy perturbation method, FEP, and the pathway method, in which the ligand is physically pulled away from the binding site, thus rendering a potential of mean force (PMF) for the binding process. Our com…
Toward Understanding the Photochemistry of Photoactive Yellow Protein: A CASPT2/CASSCF and Quantum Theory of Atoms in Molecules Combined Study of a Model Chromophore in Vacuo.
Photochemical processes that take place in biological molecules have become an increasingly important research topic for both experimentalists and theoreticians. In this work, we report the reaction mechanism of a model of the photoactive yellow protein (PYP) chromophore in vacuo. The results obtained here, using a strategy based on the simultaneous use of the minimum energy path concept and the quantum theory of atoms in molecules applied to this excited state process, suggest a possible way in which the protein could increase the efficiency of the reaction. The role played by other electronic states of the same and different spin multiplicities in the reaction process is also analyzed, wi…