Ene-adducts from 1,4-dihydropyridines and α,ß-unsaturated nitriles: asynchronous transition states displaying aromatic features.

Hydride transfer reactions involving 1,4-dihydropyridines play a central role in bioorganic chemistry as they represent an important share of redox metabolism. For this class of reactions, direct hydride transfer is the commonly accepted mechanism; however, an Alder-Ene-like pathway has been proposed as a plausible alternative. The reaction between 1,4-ditrimethylsilyl-1,4-dihydropyridine and α,ß-unsaturated nitriles is a solid candidate for this latter pathway. In this work, we perform high level ab initio and density functional theory computations to characterize the mechanism of this reaction, taking into account diverse reaction paths, and evaluating the effect of solvent polarity and variations in the chemical structure. Our analysis explains the stereochemical aspects of the reaction, characterizing the up to now unresolved spatial configurations of the predominant products, and may contribute to the understanding of enzymatic reactions involving NADP(H). The reactions are found to proceed in an asynchronous fashion, with transition states that display significant aromatic features. With this observation in mind, Alder-Ene and direct hydride transfer pathways can be understood as two extremes of a continuous mechanistic spectrum for this kind of reaction, with the analyzed systems located approximately equidistant from both ends.

Intersubunit Coupling Enables Fast CO2-Fixation by Reductive Carboxylases.

Enoyl-CoA carboxylases/reductases (ECRs) are some of the most efficient CO2-fixing enzymes described to date. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the extraordinary catalytic activity of ECRs on the level of the protein assembly remain elusive. Here we used a combination of ambient-temperature X-ray free electron laser (XFEL) and cryogenic synchrotron experiments to study the structural organization of the ECR from Kitasatospora setae. The K. setae ECR is a homotetramer that differentiates into a pair of dimers of open- and closed-form subunits in the catalytically active state. Using molecular dynamics simulations and structure-based mutagenesis, we show that catalysis is synchronized in the K. setae ECR across the pair of dimers. This conformational coupling of catalytic domains is conferred by individual amino acids to achieve high CO2-fixation rates. Our results provide unprecedented insights into the dynamic organization and synchronized inter- and intrasubunit communications of this remarkably efficient CO2-fixing enzyme during catalysis.

Atom-Condensed Fukui Function in Condensed Phases and Biological Systems and Its Application to Enzymatic Fixation of Carbon Dioxide.

Local reactivity descriptors such as atom-condensed Fukui functions are promising computational tools to study chemical reactivity at specific sites within a molecule. Their applications have been mainly focused on isolated molecules in their most stable conformation without considering the effects of the surroundings. Here we propose to combine quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics simulations to obtain the microstates (configurations) of a molecular system using different representations of the molecular environment and calculate Boltzmann-weighted atom-condensed local reactivity descriptors based on conceptual density functional theory. Our approach takes the conformational fluctuations of the molecular system and the polarization of its electron density by the environment into account, allowing us to analyze the effect of the molecular environment on reactivity. In this contribution, we apply the method mentioned above to the catalytic fixation of carbon dioxide by crotonyl-CoA carboxylase/reductase and study if the enzyme alters the reactivity of its substrate compared with an aqueous solution. Our main result is that the protein environment activates the substrate by the elimination of solute-solvent hydrogen bonds from aqueous solution in the two elementary steps of the reaction mechanism: the nucleophilic attack of a hydride anion from NADPH on the α,ß-unsaturated thioester and the electrophilic attack of carbon dioxide on the formed enolate species.

Four amino acids define the CO2 binding pocket of enoyl-CoA carboxylases/reductases.

Carboxylases are biocatalysts that capture and convert carbon dioxide (CO2) under mild conditions and atmospheric concentrations at a scale of more than 400 Gt annually. However, how these enzymes bind and control the gaseous CO2 molecule during catalysis is only poorly understood. One of the most efficient classes of carboxylating enzymes are enoyl-CoA carboxylases/reductases (Ecrs), which outcompete the plant enzyme RuBisCO in catalytic efficiency and fidelity by more than an order of magnitude. Here we investigated the interactions of CO2 within the active site of Ecr from Kitasatospora setae Combining experimental biochemistry, protein crystallography, and advanced computer simulations we show that 4 amino acids, N81, F170, E171, and H365, are required to create a highly efficient CO2-fixing enzyme. Together, these 4 residues anchor and position the CO2 molecule for the attack by a reactive enolate created during the catalytic cycle. Notably, a highly ordered water molecule plays an important role in an active site that is otherwise carefully shielded from water, which is detrimental to CO2 fixation. Altogether, our study reveals unprecedented molecular details of selective CO2 binding and C-C-bond formation during the catalytic cycle of nature's most efficient CO2-fixing enzyme. This knowledge provides the basis for the future development of catalytic frameworks for the capture and conversion of CO2 in biology and chemistry.

Awakening the Sleeping Carboxylase Function of Enzymes: Engineering the Natural CO2-Binding Potential of Reductases.

Developing new carbon dioxide (CO2) fixing enzymes is a prerequisite to create new biocatalysts for diverse applications in chemistry, biotechnology and synthetic biology. Here we used bioinformatics to identify a "sleeping carboxylase function" in the superfamily of medium-chain dehydrogenases/reductases (MDR), i.e. enzymes that possess a low carboxylation side activity next to their original enzyme reaction. We show that propionyl-CoA synthase from Erythrobacter sp. NAP1, as well as an acrylyl-CoA reductase from Nitrosopumilus maritimus possess carboxylation yields of 3 ± 1 and 4.5 ± 0.9%. We use rational design to engineer these enzymes further into carboxylases by increasing interactions of the proteins with CO2 and suppressing diffusion of water to the active site. The engineered carboxylases show improved CO2-binding and kinetic parameters comparable to naturally existing CO2-fixing enzymes. Our results provide a strategy to develop novel CO2-fixing enzymes and shed light on the emergence of natural carboxylases during evolution.

Electronic structure benchmark calculations of inorganic and biochemical carboxylation reactions.

Carboxylation reactions represent a very special class of chemical reactions that is characterized by the presence of a carbon dioxide (CO2 ) molecule as reactive species within its global chemical equation. These reactions work as fundamental gear to accomplish the CO2 fixation and thus to build up more complex molecules through different technological and biochemical processes. In this context, a correct description of the CO2 electronic structure turns out to be crucial to study the chemical and electronic properties associated with this kind of reactions. Here, a systematic study of CO2 electronic structure and its contribution to different carboxylation reaction electronic energies has been carried out by means of several high-level ab initio post-Hartree Fock (post-HF) and density functional theory (DFT) calculations for a set of biochemistry and inorganic systems. We have found that for a correct description of the CO2 electronic correlation energy it is necessary to include post-CCSD(T) contributions (beyond the gold standard). These high-order excitations are required to properly describe the interactions of the four π-electrons associated with the two degenerated π-molecular orbitals of the CO2 molecule. Likewise, our results show that in some reactions it is possible to obtain accurate reaction electronic energy values with computationally less demanding methods when the error in the electronic correlation energy compensates between reactants and products. Furthermore, the provided post-HF reference values allowed to validating different DFT exchange-correlation functionals combined with different basis sets for chemical reactions that are relevant in biochemical CO2 fixing enzymes. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Catalytic Reaction Mechanism in Native and Mutant Catechol- O-methyltransferase from the Adaptive String Method and Mean Reaction Force Analysis.

Catechol- O-methyltransferase is an enzyme that catalyzes the methylation reaction of dopamine by S-adenosylmethionine, increasing the reaction rate by almost 16 orders of magnitude compared to the reaction in aqueous solution. Here, we combine the recently introduced adaptive string method and the mean reaction force method, in combination with the structural and electronic descriptors to characterize the reaction mechanism. The catalytic effect of the enzyme is addressed by the comparison of the reaction in the human wild-type enzyme, in the less effective Y68A mutant, and in aqueous solution. The influence of these different environments at different stages of the chemical process and the significance of the key collective variables describing the reaction were quantified. Our results show that the native enzyme limits the access of water molecules to the active site, enhancing the interaction between the reactants and providing a more favorable electrostatic environment to assist the SN2 methyl transfer reaction.

The effect of the environment on the methyl transfer reaction mechanism between trimethylsulfonium and phenolate.

Methyl transfer reactions play an important role in biology and are catalyzed by various enzymes. Here, the influence of the molecular environment on the reaction mechanism was studied using advanced ab initio methods, implicit solvation models and QM/MM molecular dynamics simulations. Various conceptual DFT and electronic structure descriptors identified different processes along the reaction coordinate e.g. electron transfer. The results show that the polarity of the solvent increases the energy required for the electron transfer and that this spontaneous process is located in the transition state region identified by the (mean) reaction force analysis and takes place through the bonds which are broken and formed. The inclusion of entropic contributions and hydrogen bond interactions in QM/MM molecular dynamics simulations with a validated DFTB3 Hamiltonian yields activation barriers in good agreement with the experimental values in contrast to the values obtained using two implicit solvation models.

A consistent S-Adenosylmethionine force field improved by dynamic Hirshfeld-I atomic charges for biomolecular simulation.

S-Adenosylmethionine (AdoMet) is involved in many biological processes as cofactor in enzymes transferring its sulfonium methyl group to various substrates. Additionally, it is used as drug and nutritional supplement to reduce the pain in osteoarthritis and against depression. Due to the biological relevance of AdoMet it has been part of various computational simulation studies and will also be in the future. However, to our knowledge no rigorous force field parameter development for its simulation in biological systems has been reported. Here, we use electronic structure calculations combined with molecular dynamics simulations in explicit solvent to develop force field parameters compatible with the AMBER99 force field. Additionally, we propose new dynamic Hirshfeld-I atomic charges which are derived from the polarized electron density of AdoMet in aqueous solution to describe its electrostatic interactions in biological systems. The validation of the force field parameters and the atomic charges is performed against experimental interproton NOE distances of AdoMet in aqueous solution and crystal structures of AdoMet in the cavity of three representative proteins.