Covalent Docking Predicts Substrates for Haloalkanoate Dehalogenase Superfamily Phosphatases

Enzyme function prediction remains an important open problem. Though structure-based modeling, such as metabolite docking, can identify substrates of some enzymes, it is ill-suited to reactions that progress through a covalent intermediate. Here we investigated the ability of covalent docking to identify substrates that pass through such a covalent intermediate, focusing particularly on the haloalkanoate dehalogenase superfamily. In retrospective assessments, covalent docking recapitulated substrate binding modes of known cocrystal structures and identified experimental substrates from a set of putative phosphorylated metabolites. In comparison, noncovalent docking of high-energy intermediates yielded nonproductive poses. In prospective predictions against seven enzymes, a substrate was identified for five. For one of those cases, a covalent docking prediction, confirmed by empirical screening, and combined with genomic context analysis, suggested the identity of the enzyme that catalyzes the orphan phosp...