Reactivity of Intermediates in Benzoylformate Decarboxylase: Avoiding the Path to Destruction
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Benzoylformate decarboxylase forms a covalent intermediate from thiamin diphosphate (TDP) and benzoylformate, alpha-mandelylTDP. This loses carbon dioxide to form a carbanion (enamine). Protonation of the carbanion and elimination of benzaldehyde regenerate enzyme-bound TDP. We synthesized alpha-mandelylthiamin and found that the rate of the loss of carbon dioxide is one-millionth that of the enzymic reaction. Thus, the enzyme provides an environment that facilitates the unimolecular decarboxylation process. However, the resulting nonenzymic carbanion reacts very rapidly to give products that lead to the irreversible destruction of the cofactor. This contrasts with the normal process on the enzyme. Brønsted acids on the enzyme may divert the reaction to the benzaldehyde precursor, or the enzyme may block access to the pathway that leads to destruction of the cofactor.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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 | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".