The Oxyanion Hole in Serine β-Lactamase Catalysis: Interactions of Thiono Substrates with the Active Site

Both functional and structural studies of serine β-lactamases indicate the existence of an oxyanion hole at the active site with an important role in catalysis. The functional presence of the oxyanion hole is demonstrated by the previous observation that thiono-β-lactams are very poor substrates of β-lactamases (B. P. Murphy, and R. F. Pratt, 1988, Biochem. J.256, 669–672) and in the present paper by the inability of these enzymes to catalyze hydrolysis of a thiono analog of a depsipeptide substrate. This thiono effect was first noted and interpreted in regard to classical serine hydrolases although the chemical basis for it has not been firmly established either in those enzymes or in β-lactamases. In this paper a computational approach to a further understanding of the effect has been taken. The results for a class C β-lactamase show that the deacylation tetrahedral intermediate interacted more strongly with the enzyme with an O− placed in the oxyanion hole than an S−. On the other hand, the converse was true for acylation tetrahedral intermediate species, a result distinctly not in accord with experiment. These results indicate that the thiono effect does not arise from unfavorable interactions between enzyme and thiono substrate at the tetrahedral intermediate stage but must be purely kinetic in nature, i.e., arise in a transitional species at an early stage of the acylation reaction. The same conclusion as to the origin of the thiono effect was also indicated by a less extensive series of calculations on a class A β-lactamase and on chymotrypsin.