Exploring chloride selectivity and halogenase regioselectivity of the SalL enzyme through QM/MM modeling

The catalytic mechanism of SalL chlorinase has been investigated by combining quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) techniques and umbrella sampling simulations to compute free energy profiles. Our results shed light on the interesting fact that the substitution of chloride with fluorine in SalL chlorinase leads to a loss of halogenase activity. Potential of Mean Force based on DFTB3/MM analysis shows that fluorination corresponds to a barrier of 13.5 kcal.mol-1 higher than chlorination. Additionally, our results present a molecular description of SalL acting as a chlorinase instead of a methyl halide transferase.