Isotopic, competitive technique ratio

A disadvantage of this technique is that isotopic labeling can cause unwanted perturbations to the competition between pathways through kinetic isotope effects. Whereas the Born-Oppenheimer potential energy surfaces are not affected by isotopic substitution, rotational and vibrational levels become more closely spaced with substitution of heavier isotopes. Consequently, the rate of reaction in competing pathways will be modified somewhat compared to the unlabeled reaction. This effect scales approximately as the square root of the ratio of the isotopic masses, and will be most pronounced for deuterium or... 

Secondary isotope effects are small. In fact, most of the secondary deuterium KIEs that have been reported are less than 20% and many of them are only a few per cent. In spite of the small size, the same techniques that are used for other kinetic measurements are usually satisfactory for measuring these KIEs. Both competitive methods where both isotopic compounds are present in the same reaction mixture (Westaway and Ali, 1979) and absolute rate measurements, i.e. the separate determination of the rate constant for the single isotopic species (Fang and Westaway, 1991), are employed (Parkin, 1991). Most competitive methods (Melander and Saunders, 1980e) utilize isotope ratio measurements based on mass spectrometry (Shine et al., 1984) or radioactivity measurements by liquid scintillation (Ando et al., 1984 Axelsson et al., 1991). However, some special methods, which are particularly useful for the accurate determination of secondary KIEs, have been developed. These newer methods, which are based on polarimetry, nmr spectroscopy, chromatographic isotopic separation and liquid scintillation, respectively, are described in this section. The accurate measurement of small heavy-atom KIEs is discussed in a recent review by Paneth (1992). 

While competitive methods to determine KIE s are free from errors due to differences in reaction conditions (impurities, temperature, pH, etc.) they do require access to equipment that allows high precision measurements of isotope ratios. The selection of an appropriate analytical technique depends on the type of the isotope and its location in the molecule. For studies with stable isotopes the most commonly used technique (and usually the most appropriate) is isotope ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS). 

Radioactive isotopes are commonly used for competitive KIE measurements in a double-label experiment, yielding kn/kj or ko/kj ratios on kcat/ M- This technique typically utilizes tracer-level radioactivity in the position of interest (primary or secondary) to monitor the transfer of radioactivity from reactant to product, and requires a remote label (e.g. C) in order to measure the conversion of unlabelled substrate to product. As an example, [ring- C(U)]benzyl alcohol and [l- H]benzyl alcohol (Scheme 10.2) can be used to simultaneously measure the primary and a-secondary kn/kj effects in the reaction catalyzed by alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), as the tracer tritium is incorporated randomly into primary and a-secondary positions [6, 10]. 

Competitive KIEs can reduce the uncertainty in prefactor isotope effects, and have been used to demonstrate tunneling in several enzymes [24, 36, 65]. As discussed above, the competitive, double-label, technique for measuring KIEs is inherently more precise than noncompetitive techniques, and can reduce the experimental uncertainty in the KIE on the Arrhenius prefactor and energy of activation. The use of tritium also provides multiple ratios Ah/At and Ad/At, which are helpful in resolving kinetic complexity [61]. It has been noted that a change in the rate-limiting step over the temperature range can lead to anomalous Arrhenius... 

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