Finite-temperature effects in enzymatic reactions - Insights from QM/MM free-energy simulations

We report potential-energy and free-energy data for three enzymatic reactions: carbon-halogen bond formation in fluorinase, hydrogen abstraction from camphor in cytochrome P450cam, and chorismate-to-prephenate Claisen rearrangement in chorismate mutase. The results were obtained by combined quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) optimizations and two types of QM/MM free-energy simulations (free-energy perturbation and umbrella sampling) using semi-empirical or density-functional QM methods. Based on these results and our previously published free-energy data on electrophilic substitution in para-hydroxybenzoate hydroxylase, we discuss the importance of finite-temperature effects in the chemical step of enzyme reactions. We find that the entropic contribution to the activation barrier is generally rather small, usually of the order of 5 kJ mol(-1) or less, consistent with the notion that enzymes bind and pre-organize the reactants in the active site. A somewhat larger entropic contribution is encountered in the case of chorismate mutase where the pericyclic transition state is intrinsically more rigid than the chorismate reactant (also in the enzyme). The present results suggest that barriers from QM/MM geometry optimization may often be close to free-energy barriers for the chemical step in enzymatic reactions.