Chymotrypsin mechanisms

Much of what is known about the chymotrypsin mechanism is based on studies of the hydrolysis of artificial substrates—simple organic esters, such as /Miitrophenylacetate, and methyl esters of amino acid analogs, such as... 

The Chymotrypsin Mechanism Involves Acylation and Deacylation of a Ser Residue... 

A covalent bond consists of a shared pair of electrons. Nonbonded electrons important to the reaction mechanism are designated by dots (— OH). Curved arrows (<- ) represent the movement of electron pairs. For movement of a single electron (as in a free radical reaction), a single-headed (fishhook-type) arrow is used ( ). Most reaction steps involve an unshared electron pair (as in the chymotrypsin mechanism). 

MECHANISM FIGURE 6-21 Hydrolytic cleavage of a peptide bond by chymotrypsin. The reaction has two phases. In the acylation phase (steps to ), formation of a covalent acyl-enzyme intermediate is coupled to cleavage of the peptide bond. In the deacylation phase (steps to ), deacylation regenerates the free enzyme this is essentially the reverse of the acylation phase, with water mirroring, in reverse, the role of the amine component of the substrate. Chymotrypsin Mechanism... 

An illustration of the way that KM is a measure of the amount of enzyme that is bound in any form whatsoever to the substrate is given by the following mechanism (cf. the chymotrypsin mechanism, equation 3.19) ... 

Protonic percolation may be the event that imposes a lower limit on the hydration level for onset of enzyme activity, for those enzymes dependent on general catalysis. The hydration level at which chymotrypsin first displays activity, 0.12 h, is in agreement with this suggestion. The chymotrypsin mechanism includes general catalysis, but not significant substrate rearrangement in the rate-determining step. As noted, other enzymes show a critical hydration level between 0.1 and 0.2 h. 

Proteins are hydrolyzed very slowly with storage in water at neutral pH. However, addition of proteases can increase the rate of hydrolysis about 10 billion times over the spontaneous rate. The chymotrypsin mechanism depicted in Figure 2.53 is shared by trypsin and elastase. These three proteases are members of a family called the serine proteases (named after Ser 195), Carboxypeptidase Aand pepsin catalyze peptide hydrolysis by different mechanisms and are not part of this family. 

Additional features of the chymotrypsin mechanism have been elucidated by analyzing the dependence of the reaction on pH. The rate of chymotrypsin-catalyzed cleavage generally exhibits a bell-shaped pH-rate profile (Fig. 6-20). The rates plotted in Figure 6-20a are obtained at low (subsaturating) substrate concentrations and therefore represent The plot can be... 

Reflect and Apply Explain why the second phase of the chymotrypsin mechanism is slower than the first phase. 

Fig. 5. Protein folding. The unfolded polypeptide chain coUapses and assembles to form simple stmctural motifs such as -sheets and a-hehces by nucleation-condensation mechanisms involving the formation of hydrogen bonds and van der Waal s interactions. Small proteins (eg, chymotrypsin inhibitor 2) attain their final (tertiary) stmcture in this way. Larger proteins and multiple protein assembhes aggregate by recognition and docking of multiple domains (eg, -barrels, a-helix bundles), often displaying positive cooperativity. Many noncovalent interactions, including hydrogen bonding, van der Waal s and electrostatic interactions, and the hydrophobic effect are exploited to create the final, compact protein assembly. Further stmctural...

An example of a pseudoirreversible inhibitor has been demonstrated for chymotrypsin (36). This enzyme is a serine protease, and its mechanism of catalysis may be outlined as follows, where or R2 preferentially is a hydrophobic amino acid residue. 

Sigler, P.B., et al. Structure of crystalline a-chymotrypsin II. A preliminary report including a hypothesis for the activation mechanism. /. Mol. Biol. 35 143-164, 1968. 

Trypsin, chymotrypsin, and elastase all carry out the same reaction—the cleavage of a peptide chain—and although their structures and mechanisms are quite similar, they display very different specificities. Trypsin cleaves peptides... 

The actual reaction mechanism is very similar for the different members of the family, but the specificity toward the different side chain, R, differs most strikingly. For example, trypsin cleaves bonds only after positively charged Lys or Arg residues, while chymotrypsin cleaves bonds after large hydrophobic residues. The specificity of serine proteases is usually designated by labeling the residues relative to the peptide bond that is being cleaved, using the notation... 

The elucidation of the X-ray structure of chymotrypsin (Ref. 1) and in a later stage of subtilisin (Ref. 2) revealed an active site with three crucial groups (Fig. 7.1)-the active serine, a neighboring histidine, and a buried aspartic acid. These three residues are frequently called the catalytic triad, and are designated here as Aspc Hisc Serc (where c indicates a catalytic residue). The identification of the location of the active-site groups and intense biochemical studies led to several mechanistic proposals for the action of serine proteases (see, for example, Refs. 1 and 2). However, it appears that without some way of translating the structural information to reaction-potential surfaces it is hard to discriminate between different alternative mechanisms. Thus it is instructive to use the procedure introduced in previous chapters and to examine the feasibility of different... 

Catalysis by enzymes that proceeds via a unique reaction mechanism typically occurs when the transition state intermediate forms a covalent bond with the enzyme (covalent catalysis). The catalytic mechanism of the serine protease chymotrypsin (Figure 7-7) illustrates how an enzyme utilizes covalent catalysis to provide a unique reaction pathway. 

Bromomethyl-3,4-dibromo-3,4-dihydrocoumarin 1 (Fig. 11.4) and its chloro-methylated analogue 2b rapidly and progressively inactivate a-chymotrypsin and also the activities of a series of trypsin-like proteases. A benzyl substituent characteristic of good substrates of a-chymotrypsin was introduced at the 3-position to make inhibition more selective. This substituted dihydrocoumarin 3 irreversibly inhibited a-chymotrypsin and other proteases. These functionalized six-membered aromatic lactones, and their five- and seven-membered counterparts, 3//-benzofuran-2-ones 2a26 and 4,5-dihydro-3//-benzo[b]oxepin-2-ones 2c,27 were the first efficient suicide inhibitors of serine proteases. Their postulated mechanism of action is shown in Scheme 11.2. 

Coumarincarboxylate derivatives are versatile, efficient, low molecular weight, nonpeptidic protease inhibitors. Both esters and amides behave as time-dependent inhibitors of a-chymotrypsin but the esters are clearly more efficient than the corresponding amides. The criteria for a suicide mechanism are met. The presence of a latent alkylating function at the 6-position (chloromethyl group) is required to produce to inactivation by a suicide mechanism (Scheme 11.3, pathway a). Aryl esters, in particular the meta-substituted phenyl esters are the best inhibitors. Thus, m-chlorophenyl 6-(chloromethyl)-2-oxo-27/-l-benzopyran-3-carboxylate is one of the well-known inactivator of a-chymotrypsin (kJK, = 76(),000M s 1 at pH 7.5 and 25 °C, Table 11.1). 

Finally, coumarin derivatives may act as general inhibitors of serine proteases or as specific inhibitors of human leukocyte elastase, depending on the nature of the substituents, through two distinct mechanisms, suicide substrates (a-chymotrypsin)... 

Pochet, L. Doucet, C. Dive, G. Wooters,J. Masereel, B. Reboud-Ravaux,M. Pirotte, B. Coumarinic derivatives as mechanism-based inhibitors of a-chymotrypsin and human leukocyte elastase. Bioorg. Med. Chem. 2000, 8, 1489-1501. 

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