Histidine enzyme-catalyzed transformations

FIGURE 13.2 Common enzyme-catalyzed transformations of histidine and compounds that may arise from histamine and urocanic add. 

Compounds with heterocyclic rings are inextricably woven into the most basic biochemical processes of life. If one were to choose a step in a biochemical pathway at random, there would be a very good chance that one of the reactants or products would be a heterocyclic compound. Even if this was not true, participation of heterocyclics in the reaction in question would almost be certain as all biochemical transformations are catalyzed by enzymes, and three of the twenty amino acids found in enzymes contain heterocyclic rings. Of these, the imidazole ring of histidine in particular would be likely to be involved histidine is present at the active sites of many enzymes and usually functions as a general acid-base or as a metal ion ligand. Furthermore, many enzymes function only in the presence of certain small non-amino acid molecules called coenzymes (or cofactors) which more often than not are heterocyclic compounds. But even if the enzyme in question contained none of these coenzymes or the three amino acids referred to above, an essential role would still be played by heterocycles as all enzymes are synthesized according to the code in DNA, which of course is defined by the sequence of the heterocyclic bases found in DNA. 

Many enzymes use coenzymes to achieve the detailed transformations they catalyze but the enzyme proteins themselves also supply important elements of the catalysis. Enzyme proteins are the source of the entire catalytic effect when coenzymes are not involved. As one common process, acid and base groups in enzymes perform proton transfers that are critical to the catalytic mechanism. A particularly informative example is observed in the enzyme ribonuclease A, which catalyzes the cleavage of RNA (16). The catalytic process (Fig. 4) involves the imidazole ring of the amino acid histidine that removes the proton from the 2-hydroxyl of the ribose. A different protonated histidine transfers a proton to the RNA to promote the cleavage process. Studies with D2O-H2O mixtures established that the two proton transfers occur at the same time (17). 

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