Flavin-dependent enzymes, mechanism-based

Silverman and coworkers have carried out extensive research on the mechanism of inactivation of MAO by cyclopropylamine analogues. They first reported in the early 1980s that A/-cyclopropyl-A/-arylalkylamines are mechanism-based inactivators of MAO [121,125], The mechanism proposed was enzyme-catalyzed one electron oxidation of A/-cyclopropylamines to give reactive ring-opened products which further react with either flavin and/or a cysteine residue, depending on the structure of the inactivator. According to their reports [120,125, 126], 1-phenylcyclopropylamine (50) attached reversibly to a cysteine residue and irreversibly to the flavin when it activated MAO B, whereas 50 modified only the flavin during inactivation of MAO A. In the case of frans-2-phenylcyclopropy-lamine (8a) and A/-cyclopropyl-a-methylbenzylamine (51), both MAO A and B are inactivated by attachment to a cysteine residue (Fig. 3). 

A second new class of MAO mechanism-based inactivators, (aminoalkyl)tri-methylsilanes, have been reported by Silverman and Banik (114). The idea for this class of MAO inactivators is based on the known activation of the carbon-silicon bond toward homolytic cleavage reaction when the silicon atom is /3 to a radical cation (115, 116). The aminomethyl-, aminoethyl-, and (amino-propyl)trimethylsilanes are all pseudo-first-order time-dependent inactivators of beef liver MAO that reduce the flavin cofactor during the inactivation reaction. Since denaturation of the inactivated enzyme allows flavin leoxidation, covalent bond formation might be to an amino acid residue (114). The stabilities of the enzyme adducts from the (aminoalkyl)trimethylsilanes were found to be differ-... 

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