Isotope effects hydrolysis

The neutral or uncatalyzed hydrolysis of carboxylic acid derivatives has two very interesting characteristics (1) large negative entropies of activation, and (2) fairly substantial solvent isotope effects. Hydrolysis of carboxylic ester derivatives then must be quite different at the molecular level from hydrolysis of saturated carbon derivatives which... 

The second step in acetal and ketal hydrolysis is conversion of the hemiacetal or hemiketal to the carbonyl compound. The mechanism of this step is similar to that of the first step. Usually, the second step is faster than the initial one. Hammett a p plots and solvent isotope effects both indicate that the transition state has less cationic character than... 

This variation from the ester hydrolysis mechanism also reflects the poorer leaving ability of amide ions as compared to alkoxide ions. The evidence for the involvement of the dianion comes from kinetic studies and from solvent isotope effects, which suggest that a rate-limiting proton transfer is involved. The reaction is also higher than first-order in hydroxide ion under these circumstances, which is consistent with the dianion mechanism. 

While the A1 mechanism shown above operates in most acetal hydrolyses, it has been shown that at least two other mechanisms can take place with suitable substrates. In one of these mechanisms the second and third of the above steps are concerted, so that the mechanism is Sn2cA (or A2). This has been shown, for example, in the hydrolysis of 1,1-diethoxyethane, by isotope effect studies ... 

A. Alkaline Hydrolysis. -The low kinetic isotope effect observed in the protonation of carbanions formed in phosphonium salt hydrolysis leads to the idea that there is little breaking of the phosphorus-carbon bond and correspondingly little transfer of a proton to the incipient carbanion in the transition state (87) of the rate-determining step. ... 

The basicities of some phosphinamides (84) have been measured and the acid-catalysed hydrolysis studied. Unsubstituted and A -alkyl derivatives follow an A2 mechanism of reversible protonation followed by ratedetermining water attack. However, the rates for the A -aryl derivatives follow Hq (but with a slope of 0.5), and an A mechanism was suggested as most consistent with this fact and the solvent isotope effect. The anomalous dependence on Ho, together with the large negative value of A5, while not necessarily excluding an ionization mechanism, leaves the question in some doubt. 

A kinetic isotope effect 160/180 of 2% in the spontaneous hydrolysis of the 2,4-dinitrophenyl phosphate dianion, whose ester oxygen is labeled, suggests a P/O bond cleavage in the transition state of the reaction, and thus also constitutes compelling evidence for formation of the metaphosphate 66,67). The hydrolysis behavior of some phosphoro-thioates (110) is entirely analogous 68). 

This all seemed very reasonable at the time, but subsequent work was not consistent with it. A small but measurable amount of 180 exchange was reported for some amides in reasonably concentrated HC1 media,277,278 and for at least one amide the amount of exchange decreased with increasing acidity,277 which is the opposite of what would be expected with the Scheme 14 one-water-molecule mechanism taking over from the equation (74) three-water-molecule mechanism as the acidity increased. Also, the solvent deuterium isotope effect was found to be close to unity for at least one amide,278 a result that has since been confirmed,279 which is not what would be expected on the basis of either a three- or a one-water-molecule process.280 Because of this it was decided to reexamine the lactam hydrolysis data subsequent to the publication of the excess acidity analysis of the H NMR results for these,268 a new study appeared with rate constant data for four of these molecules in aqueous H2S04 media obtained by UV spectroscopy at several temperatures,281 and this was included too.282... 

This is the same mechanism as that given above for esters, in equation (42). The difference between esters and amides is apparent from a comparison of the two tetrahedral intermediates [5] and [17], The former contains three oxygens, any of which can be protonated, resulting in much lsO exchange being observed when the reaction takes place in 180-enriched water,275,276 but [17] contains a much more basic nitrogen, which will be protonated preferentially and lead to much less 180 exchange, as observed.274 277,278 Also, ammonium ion formation makes the overall reaction irreversible, unlike ester hydrolysis. The calculated solvent isotope effect for the Scheme 15 process is 1.00,280 exactly in accord with experimental observation.278,279... 

The observation of a primary solvent deuterium isotope effect (kH/fa>) = 2-4 on the specific acid-catalyzed hydrolysis of vinyl ethers provides evidence for reaction by rate-determining protonation of the alkene.69 Values of kHikD 1 are expected if alkene hydration proceeds by rate-determining addition of solvent to an oxocarbenium ion intermediate, since there is no motion of a solvent hydron at the transition state for this step. However, in the latter case, determination of the solvent isotope effect on the reaction of the fully protonated substrate is complicated by the competing exchange of deuterium from solvent into substrate (see above). 

Because solvent viscosity experiments indicated that the rate-determining step in the PLCBc reaction was likely to be a chemical one, deuterium isotope effects were measured to probe whether proton transfer might be occurring in this step. Toward this end, the kinetic parameters for the PLCBc catalyzed hydrolysis of the soluble substrate C6PC were determined in D20, and a normal primary deuterium isotope effect of 1.9 on kcat/Km was observed for the reaction [34]. A primary isotope effect of magnitude of 1.9 is commonly seen in enzymatic reactions in which proton transfer is rate-limiting, although effects of up to 4.0 have been recorded [107-110]. 

Further evidence for the Aa11 mechanism was obtained from a solvent kinetic isotope study. The theoretical kinetic isotope effects for intermediates in the three reaction pathways as derived from fractionation factors are indicated in parentheses in Scheme 6.143,144 For the Aa11 mechanism (pathway (iii)) a solvent KIE (/ch2o A d2o) between 0.48 and 0.33 is predicted while both bimolecular processes (pathways (i) and (ii)) would have greater values of between 0.48 and 0.69. Acid-catalysed hydrolysis of ethylene oxide derivatives and acetals, which follow an A1 mechanism, display KIEs in the region of 0.5 or less while normal acid-catalysed ester hydrolyses (AAc2 mechanism) have values between 0.6 and 0.7.145,146... 

A mechanistic study of acid and metal ion (Ni2+, Cu2+, Zn2+) promoted hydrolysis of [N-(2-carboxyphenyl)iminodiacetate](picolinato)chromate (III) indicated parallel H+- or M2+-dependent and -independent pathways. Solvent isotope effects indicate that the H+-dependent path involves rapid pre-equilibrium protonation followed by rate-limiting ring opening. Similarly, the M2+-dependent path involves rate-determining Cr-0 bond breaking in a rapidly formed binuclear intermediate. The relative catalytic efficiencies of the three metal ions reflect the Irving-Williams stability order (88). 

Christensen (1966, 1967) found that aromatic sulfonic anhydrides undergo rapid, uncatalyzed hydrolysis in either acetone or aqueous dioxan (t1/2= 17 s at 25°C for Ar =p-tolyl in 65% dioxan). Added strong acids (or added salts like NaCl or LiCl) have no effect on the rate at concentrations up to 0.01 M. The solvent isotope effect associated with this spontaneous hydro-... 

The small solvent isotope effect shows clearly that a proton transfer is not part of the rate-determining step of the hydrolysis. Christensen (1966, 1967) favors an SN2-type mechanism (164) for the hydrolysis, with nucleophilic attack of water on a sulfonyl group synchronous with the departure of ArSO. The alternative formulation (165), however, where a pentacovalent inter-... 

The mechanism of the spontaneous hydrolysis of aryl cr-disulfones (188) in aqueous dioxan has been studied in some detail (Kice and Kasperek, 1969). The reaction is approximately 104 times slower under a given set of conditions than the very rapid spontaneous hydrolysis of aryl sulfinyl sulfones (135) discussed earlier in Section 5. The large difference in rate arises because AH for the spontaneous hydrolysis of a given cr-disulfone is about 6 kcal mol-1 larger than AH for the spontaneous hydrolysis of the corresponding sulfinyl sulfone. However, despite the large difference in rate and AH, the two spontaneous hydrolyses show a remarkable similarity in (a) Hammett p, (b) increase in rate with increasing water content of the solvent, (c) solvent isotope effect, and (d) AS. ... 

A full report has now appeared of solvent effects on the rates of hydrolysis of benzyltriphenylphosphonium bromide. The remarkable increase in rate in media of low polarity is largely attributable to a shift of the pre-equilibrium between phos-phonium and hydroxide ions in favour of the intermediate hydroxyphosphorane.129 In a similar vein, a study of medium and deuterium isotope effects on the rate of hydrolysis of tetraphenylphosphonium chloride in acetone-water mixtures has been reported.130... 

The haloalkane dehalogenase DhlA mechanism takes place in two consecutive Sn2 steps. In the first, the carboxylate moiety of the aspartate Aspl24, acting as a nucleophile on the carbon atom of DCE, displaces chloride anion which leads to formation of the enzyme-substrate intermediate (Equation 11.86). That intermediate is hydrolyzed by water in the subsequent step. The experimentally determined chlorine kinetic isotope effect for 1-chlorobutane, the slow substrate, is k(35Cl)/k(37Cl) = 1.0066 0.0004 and should correspond to the intrinsic isotope effect for the dehalogenation step. While the reported experimental value for DCE hydrolysis is smaller, it becomes practically the same when corrected for the intramolecular chlorine kinetic isotope effect (a consequence of the two identical chlorine labels in DCE). 

The 42-residue peptide KO-42 folds in solution into a hairpin helix-loop-helix motif that dimerizes to form a four-helix bundle. On the surface of the folded motif there are six histidines with assigned piC values in the range 5.2 to 7.2 (Fig. 1) and the second-order rate constant for the hydrolysis of mono-p-nitro-phenyl fumarate is 1140 times larger than that of the 4-methylimidazole-cataly-zed reaction at pH 4.1 and 290 K [13]. The reaction mechanism was found to be pH dependent as the kinetic solvent isotope effect was 2.0 at pH 4.7 and 1.0 at pH 6.1 and the pH dependence showed that the reaction rate depended on residues in their unprotonated form with piCj, values around 5. It was thus established that there are functional cooperative reactive sites that contain protonated and unprotonated His residues. 

Kinetics of the acid hydrolysis of A-alkenyl derivatives of phenoxazine, phenoth-iazine, and carbazole in aqueous dioxane suggest an ASe2 mechanism, based on the activation parameters and isotope effects. ... 

Kinetic studies of the reaction of Z-phenyl cyclopropanecarboxylates (1) with X-benzylamines (2) in acetonitrile at 55 °C have been carried out. The reaction proceeds by a stepwise mechanism in which the rate-determining step is the breakdown of the zwitterionic tetrahedral intermediate, T, with a hydrogen-bonded four-centre type transition state (3). The results of studies of the aminolysis reactions of ethyl Z-phenyl carbonates (4) with benzylamines (2) in acetonitrile at 25 °C were consistent with a four- (5) and a six-centred transition state (6) for the uncatalysed and catalysed path, respectively. The neutral hydrolysis of p-nitrophenyl trifluoroacetate in acetonitrile solvent has been studied by varying the molarities of water from 1.0 to 5.0 at 25 °C. The reaction was found to be third order in water. The kinetic solvent isotope effect was (A h2o/ D2o) = 2.90 0.12. Proton inventories at each molarity of water studied were consistent with an eight-membered cyclic transition state (7) model. 

A nitrogen isotope effect (1 006,1 010, and 1 006 at pH 6 73, 8 0, and 9 43) has been observed in the chymotrypsin-catalysed hydrolysis of NTacetyl-L-tryptophanamide which requires the C—N bond of the amide to be broken in the rate-determining step (O Leary and Kluetz, 1972). The isotope effect is similar to that observed for the reaction of amides with hydroxide ion which is known to proceed through a tetrahedral intermediate. 

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