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Life, Volume 2, Issue 2 (June 2012) – 1 article , Pages 215-228

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Article
Flexible Enantioselectivity of Tryptophanase Attributable to Benzene Ring in Heterocyclic Moiety of D-Tryptophan
by Akihiko Shimada and Haruka Ozaki
Life 2012, 2(2), 215-228; https://doi.org/10.3390/life2020215 - 30 May 2012
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 7133
Abstract
The invariance principle of enzyme enantioselectivity must be absolute because it is absolutely essential to the homochiral biological world. Most enzymes are strictly enantioselective, and tryptophanase is one of the enzymes with extreme absolute enantioselectivity for L-tryptophan. Contrary to conventional knowledge about the [...] Read more.
The invariance principle of enzyme enantioselectivity must be absolute because it is absolutely essential to the homochiral biological world. Most enzymes are strictly enantioselective, and tryptophanase is one of the enzymes with extreme absolute enantioselectivity for L-tryptophan. Contrary to conventional knowledge about the principle, tryptophanase becomes flexible to catalyze D-tryptophan in the presence of diammonium hydrogenphosphate. Since D-amino acids are ordinarily inert or function as inhibitors even though they are bound to the active site, the inhibition behavior of D-tryptophan and several inhibitors involved in this process was examined in terms of kinetics to explain the reason for this flexible enantioselectivity in the presence of diammonium hydrogenphosphate. Diammonium hydrogenphosphate gave tryptophanase a small conformational change so that D-tryptophan could work as a substrate. As opposed to other D-amino acids, D-tryptophan is a very bulky amino acid with a benzene ring in its heterocyclic moiety, and so we suggest that this structural feature makes the catalysis of D-tryptophan degradation possible, consequently leading to the flexible enantioselectivity. The present results not only help to understand the mechanism of enzyme enantioselectivity, but also shed light on the origin of homochirality. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Origin of Life - Feature Papers)
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