Potential of mean force calculation for the proton and hydride transfer reactions catalyzed by medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase: effect of mutations on enzyme catalysis.

Potential of mean force calculations have been performed on the wild-type medium-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase (MCAD) and two of its mutant forms. Initial simulation and analysis of the active site of the enzyme reveal that an arginine residue (Arg256), conserved in the substrate-binding domain of this group of enzymes, exists in two alternate conformations, only one of which makes the enzyme active. This active conformation was used in subsequent computations of the enzymatic reactions. It is known that the catalytic α,β-dehydrogenation of fatty acyl-CoAs consists of two C−H bond dissociation processes:  a proton abstraction and a hydride transfer. Energy profiles of the two reaction steps in the wild-type MCAD demonstrate that the reaction proceeds by a stepwise mechanism with a transient species. The activation barriers of the two steps differ by only ∼2 kcal/mol, indicating that both may contribute to the rate-limiting process. Thus this may be a stepwise dissociation mechanism whose relative barriers ...