Search results for "Enzyme catalysis"

Theoretical Study of Primary Reaction of Pseudozyma antarctica Lipase B as the Starting Point To Understand Its Promiscuity

2014

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…

QM/MM Determination of Kinetic Isotope Effects for COMT-Catalyzed Methyl Transfer Does Not Support Compression Hypothesis

2004

Secondary alpha-D3 kinetic isotope effects calculated by the hybrid AM1/TIP3P/CHARMM method for the reaction of S-adenosylmethionine with catecholate anion in aqueous solution and catalyzed by rat liver catechol O-methyltransferase at 298 K are 0.94 and 0.85, respectively, in good accord with experiment. The large inverse effect for the enzymatic reaction is not due to compression but arises from significant increases in the stretching and bending force constants involving the isotopically substituted atoms of the transferring methyl group as between the reactant complex and the transition structure, larger than for the reaction in water.

Linking Electrostatic Effects and Protein Motions in Enzymatic Catalysis. A Theoretical Analysis of Catechol O-Methyltransferase

2014

The role of protein motions in enzymatic catalysis is the subject of a hot scientific debate. We here propose the use of an explicit solvent coordinate to analyze the impact of environmental motions during the reaction process. The example analyzed here is the reaction catalyzed by catechol O-methyltransferase, a methyl transfer reaction from S-adenosylmethionine (SAM) to the nucleophilic oxygen atom of catecholate. This reaction proceeds from a charged reactant to a neutral product, and then a large electrostatic coupling with the environment could be expected. By means of a two-dimensional free energy surface, we show that a large fraction of the environmental motions needed to attain the…

Enzymatic effects on reactant and transition states. The case of chalcone isomerase.

2007

Chalcone isomerase catalyzes the transformation of chalcone to naringerin as a part of flavonoid biosynthetic pathways. The global reaction takes place through a conformational change of the substrate followed by chemical reaction, being thus an excellent example to analyze current theories about enzyme catalysis. We here present a detailed theoretical study of the enzymatic action on the conformational pre-equilibria and on the chemical steps for two different substrates of this enzyme. Free-energy profiles are obtained in terms of potentials of mean force using hybrid quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics potentials. The role of the enzyme becomes clear when compared to the counterpart eq…

A Novel Strategy to Study Electrostatic Effects in Chemical Reactions: Differences between the Role of Solvent and the Active Site of Chalcone Isomer…

2015

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.

Exploring Chemical Reactivity in Enzyme Catalyzed Processes Using QM/MM Methods: An Application to Dihydrofolate Reductase

2015

Enzymes are the catalysts used by living organisms to accelerate chemical processes under physiological conditions. In this chapter, we illustrate the current view about the origin of their extraordinary rate enhancement based on molecular simulations and, in particular, on methods based on the combination of Quantum Mechanics and Molecular Mechanics potentials which provide a solution to treat the chemical reactivity of these large and complex molecular systems. Computational studies on Dihydrofolate Reductase have been selected as a conductor wire to present the evolution and difficulties to model chemical reactivity in enzymes. The results discussed here show that experimental observatio…

Insights on the origin of catalysis on glycine N-methyltransferase from computational modeling.

2018

The origin of enzyme catalysis remains a question of debate despite much intense study. We report a QM/MM theoretical study of the SN2 methyl transfer reaction catalyzed by a glycine N-methyltransferase (GNMT) and three mutants to test whether recent experimental observations of rate-constant reductions and variations in inverse secondary α-3H kinetic isotope effects (KIEs) should be attributed to changes in the methyl donor−acceptor distance (DAD): is catalysis due to a compression effect? Semiempirical (AM1) and DFT (M06-2X) methods were used to describe the QM subset of atoms, while OPLS-AA and TIP3P classical force fields were used for the protein and water molecules, respectively. The …

ChemInform Abstract: Selectively Deprotectable Carbohydrates Based on Regioselective Enzymatic Reactions.

2010

Calvin-Benson Cycle

2015

A carbon dioxide fixation pathway where a molecule of CO2 condenses with a 5-C compound (ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate) to yield two molecules of a 3-C compound (3-phosphoglycerate). These 3-C molecules serve both as precursors for biosynthesis and, through a cyclic series of enzymatic reactions, to regenerate the 5-C molecule necessary for the first carboxylating step (Fig. 1). The pathway is present in several bacterial lineages (e.g., cyanobacteria), and its acquisition by eukaryotic cells (chloroplast in algae and plants) was through the endosymbiotic association with ancient cyanobacteria.

Strong Cooperativity and Loose Geometry between CUB Domains Are the Basis for Procollagen C-Proteinase Enhancer Activity

2009

Procollagen C-proteinase enhancers (PCPE-1 and -2) specifically activate bone morphogenetic protein-1 (BMP-1) and other members of the tolloid proteinase family during C-terminal processing of fibrillar collagen precursors. PCPEs consist of two CUB domains (CUB1 and CUB2) and one NTR domain separated by one short and one long linker. It was previously shown that PCPEs can strongly interact with procollagen molecules, but the exact mechanism by which they enhance BMP-1 activity remains largely unknown. Here, we used a series of deletion mutants of PCPE-1 and two chimeric constructs with repetitions of the same CUB domain to study the role of each domain and linker. Out of all the forms teste…