Solvents Effects on Non-Hydrolytic Enzymes

They showed that despite the fact that lower activities were generally observed, significant improvements of enantioselectivity in the oxidation of thioanisole by PAMO and EtaA could be induced by the addition of short-chain alcohols such as methanol and ethanol. Remarkably, methanol was able to cause a reversal of PAMO enantiopreference in the case of several substrates. Reversal of enantio-preference was also observed with EtaA when using t-BuOMe. The authors hypothesize that in these enzymes solvents exert their influence on enantioselectivity by binding in or near the enzyme active site and, depending on their structure, interfere with the association of the substrate. 

Based on a suggestion by Odell and Earlam [119] that crown ethers and cryptands can cause proteins to dissolve in methanol, Broos and coworkers [120] investigated the effects of crown ethers on the enzymatic activity of a-chymotrypsin in the transesterification reaction of N-acetyl-L-phenylalanine ethyl ester with n-propanol in organic solvents. They observed a 30-fold rate acceleration when 18-crown-6 was used in octane. At that time, it was proposed that the water- and cation-complexing 

It was found that MpSCD is able to restore dehydration-induced structural perturbations to a certain extent. Results were interpreted to show that enantioselectivity and structural intactness in the various solvents investigated were clearly related. Increased enzyme activity, in contrast, is mainly caused by increased structural flexibility of subtilisin in the solvents by M(iCD. Similar results have been reported for subtilisin Carlsberg [124]. 

Considering these results and the contributions by Broos [125], Watanabe [126], and Ueji [55, 77], it may be concluded that the relation between enzyme flexibility and enanhoselective performance in organic solvents is now firmly established. Molecular dynamic simulations on the flexibility of subtilisin and the mobility of bound water molecules in carbon tetrachloride corroborate the idea that organic solvents reduce molecular flexibility via interactions at specific binding sites [127]. Whether predictive tools can be developed on the basis of this knowledge remains to be seen. 

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