The reaction mechanism of chiral hydroxylation of <i>p</i>-OH and <i>p</i>-NH<sub>2</sub> substituted compounds by ethylbenzene dehydrogenase
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Ethylbenzene dehydrogenase (EbDH; enzyme commission (EC) number: 1.17.99.2) is a unique biocatalyst that hydroxylates alkylaromatic and alkylheterocyclic compounds to (S)-secondary alcohols under anaerobic conditions. The enzyme exhibits a high promiscuity catalyzing oxidation of over 30 substrates, inter alia, para-substituted alkylphenols and alkylanilines. Secondary alcohols with OH and NH 2 substituents in the aromatic ring are highly valuable synthons for many biologically active compounds in the fine chemical industry. EbDH hydroxylates most of the studied compounds highly enantioselectively, except for five substrates that harbour OH and NH 2 groups in the para position, which exhibit a significant decrease in the percent enantiomeric excess (% ee). This phenomenon is inconsistent with the previously suggested enzyme mechanism, but it may be linked to a stabilization of the carbocation intermediate by deprotonation of the OH or NH 2 substituent in the active site that yields a transient quinone (imine) ethide species. This would initiate an alternative reaction pathway involving the addition of a water molecule to a C=C double bond. This hypothesis was cross-validated by density functional theory (DFT) cluster modelling of the alternative reaction pathway with 4-ethylphenol, as well as by experimental assessment of the pH dependency of enantiomeric excesses. The results reported herein suggest that the alternative reaction pathway may significantly contribute to the overall reaction if the carbocation intermediates are stabilized by deprotonation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".