Theoretical Study of Hydroxylation of α- and β-Pinene by a Cytochrome P450 Monooxygenase Model

Previous studies on biocatalytic transformations of pinenes by cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes reveal the formation of different oxygenated products from a single substrate due to the multistate reactivity of CYP and the many reactive sites in the pinene scaffold. Up until now, the detailed mechanism of these biocatalytic transformations of pinenes have not been reported. Hereby, we report a systematic theoretical study of the plausible hydrogen abstraction and hydroxylation reactions of alpha- and beta-pinenes by CYP using the density functional theory (DFT) method. All DFT calculations in this study were based on B3LYP/LAN computational methodology using the Gaussian09 software. We used the B3LYP functional with corrections for dispersive forces, BSSE, and anharmonicity to study the mechanism and thermodynamic properties of these reactions using a bare model (without CYP) and a pinene-CYP model. According to the potential energy surface and Boltzmann distribution for radical conformers, the major reaction products of CYP-catalyzed hydrogen abstraction from beta-pinene are the doublet trans (53.4%) and doublet cis (46.1%) radical conformer at delta site. The formation of doublet cis/trans hydroxylated products released a total Gibbs free energy of about 48 kcal/mol. As for alpha pinene, the most stable radicals were trans-doublet (86.4%) and cis-doublet (13.6%) at epsilon sites, and their hydroxylation products released a total of similar to 50 kcal/mol Gibbs free energy. Our results highlight the likely C-H abstraction and oxygen rebounding sites accounting for the multi-state of CYP (doublet, quartet, and sextet spin states) and the formation of different conformers due to the presence of cis/trans allylic hydrogen in alpha-pinene and beta-pinene molecules.

Automated summary

A systematic theoretical study was conducted to investigate the hydrogen abstraction and hydroxylation reactions of alpha- and beta-pinenes by cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes. The results showed that the major reaction products of CYP-catalyzed hydrogen abstraction from beta-pinene were doublet trans (53.4%) and doublet cis (46.1%) radical conformers. The hydroxylation products of alpha pinene released a total of similar to 50 kcal/mol Gibbs free energy. Our study reveals the reaction mechanism and highlights the formation of different conformers in alpha-pinene and beta-pinene molecules.