Active site chemical modification

While it is inherently probable that product formation will be most readily initiated at sites of effective contact between reactants (A IB), it is improbable that this process alone is capable of permitting continued product formation at low temperature for two related reasons. Firstly (as discussed in detail in Sect. 2.1.1) the area available for chemical contact in a mixture of particles is a very small fraction of the total surface (and, indeed, this total surface constitutes only a small proportion of the reactant present). Secondly, bulk diffusion across a barrier layer is usually an activated process, so that interposition of product between the points of initial contact reduces the ease, and therefore the rate, of interaction. On completion of the first step in the reaction, the restricted zones of direct contact have undergone chemical modification and the continuation of reaction necessitates a transport process to maintain the migration of material from one solid to a reactive surface of the other. On increasing the temperature, surface migration usually becomes appreciable at temperatures significantly below those required for the onset of bulk diffusion within a product phase. It is to be expected that components of the less refractory constituent will migrate onto the surfaces of the other solid present. These ions are chemisorbed as the first step in product formation and, in a subsequent process, penetrate the outer layers of the... 

Susac et al. [33] showed that the cobalt-selenium (Co-Se) system prepared by sputtering and chemical methods was catalytically active toward the ORR in an acidic medium. Lee et al. [34] synthesized ternary non-noble selenides based on W and Co by the reaction of the metal carbonyls and elemental Se in xylenes. These W-Co-Se systems showed catalytic activity toward ORR in acidic media, albeit lower than with Pt/C and seemingly proceeding as a two-electron process. It was pointed out that non-noble metals too can serve as active sites for catalysis, in fact generating sufficient activity to be comparable to that of a noble metal, provided that electronic effects have been induced by the chalcogen modification. 

Chemical modification studies with fluorescein-5 -isothiocyanate support the proximity of Lys515 to the ATP binding site [98,113-117,212,339]. Fluorescein-5 -isothiocyanate stoichiometrically reacts with the Ca -ATPase in intact or solubilized sarcoplasmic reticulum at a mildly alkaline pH, causing inhibition of ATPase activity, ATP-dependent Ca transport, and the phosphorylation of the Ca " -ATPase by ATP the Ca uptake energized by acetylphosphate, carbamylphos-phate or j -nitrophenyl phosphate is only partially inhibited [113,114,212,339]. The reaction of -ATPase with FITC is competitively inhibited by ATP, AMPPNP, TNP-ATP, and less effectively by ADP or ITP the concentrations of the various nucleotides required for protection are consistent with their affinities for the ATP binding site of the Ca -ATPase [114,212,340]. 

Chemical modifications like alkylation with (A-ethylmaleimide (NEM) or oxidation with diamide that inhibit the phosphorylation activity of the enzyme did not seem to have any significant effect on the high affinity binding site when the enzyme was solubilized in the detergent decyl-PEG [69,41]. However, in the intact membrane these treatments reduced the affinity by a factor of 2-3. The reduction of the affinity was exclusively due to modification of the cysteine residue at position 384 in the B domain [69]. Apparently, the detergent effects the interaction between the B and C domains. 

The in situ bulk polymerization of vinyl monomers in PET and the graft polymerization of vinyl monomers to PET are potential useful tools for the chemical modification of this polymer. The distinction between in situ polymerization and graft polymerization is a relatively minor one, and from a practical point of view may be of no significance. In graft polymerization, the newly formed polymer is covalently bonded to a site on the host polymer (PET), while the in situ bulk polymerization of a vinyl monomer results in a polymer that is physically entraped in the PET. The vinyl polymerization in the PET is usually carried out in the presence of the swelling solvent, thereby maintaining the swollen PET structure during polymerization. The swollen structure allows the monomer to diffuse in sufficient quantities to react at the active centers that have been produced by chemical initiation (with AIBM) before termination takes place. 

Chemical modifications of proteins (enzymes) by reacting them with iV-acylimidazoles are a way of studying active sites. By this means the amino acid residues (e.g., tyrosine, lysine, histidine) essential for catalytic activity are established on the basis of acylation with the azolides and deacylation with other appropriate reagents (e.g., hydroxylamine). 

The improvement of its activity and stability has been approach by the use of GE tools (see Refs. [398] and [399], respectively). A process drawback is the fact that the oxidation of hydrophobic compounds in an organic solvent becomes limited by substrate partition between the active site of the enzyme and the bulk solvent [398], To provide the biocatalyst soluble with a hydrophobic active site access, keeping its solubility in organic solvents, a double chemical modification on horse heart cytochrome c has been performed [400,401], First, to increase the active-site hydrophobicity, a methyl esterification on the heme propionates was performed. Then, polyethylene glycol (PEG) was used for a surface modification of the protein, yielding a protein-polymer conjugates that are soluble in organic solvents. 

---