Redefining the Minimal Substrate Tolerance of Mandelate Racemase. Racemization of Trifluorolactate
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mandelate racemase (EC 5.1.2.2) from Pseudomonas putida catalyzes the interconversion of the enantiomers of mandelic acid and a variety of aryl- and heteroaryl-substituted mandelate derivatives, suggesting that β,γ-unsaturation is a requisite feature of substrates for the enzyme. We show that β,γ-unsaturation is not an absolute requirement for catalysis and that mandelate racemase can bind and catalyze the racemization of (S)-trifluorolactate (k(cat) = 2.5 ± 0.3 s(-1), K(m) = 1.74 ± 0.08 mM) and (R)-trifluorolactate (k(cat) = 2.0 ± 0.2 s(-1), K(m) = 1.2 ± 0.2 mM). The enzyme was shown to catalyze hydrogen-deuterium exchange at the α-postion of trifluorolactate using (1)H NMR spectrocsopy. β-Elimination of fluoride was not detected using (19)F NMR spectroscopy. Although mandelate racemase bound trifluorolactate with an affinity similar to that exhibited for mandelate, the turnover numbers (k(cat)) were markedly reduced by ∼318-fold, resulting in catalytic efficiencies (k(cat)/K(m)) that were ~400-fold lower than those observed for mandelate. These observations suggested that chemical steps on the enzyme were likely rate-determining, which was confirmed by demonstrating that the rates of mandelate racemase-catalyzed racemization of (S)-trifluorolactate were not dependent upon the solvent microviscosity. Circular dichroism spectroscopy was used to measure the rates of nonenzymatic racemization of (S)-trifluorolactate at elevated temperatures. The values of ΔH(‡) and ΔS(‡) for the nonenzymatic racemization reaction were determined to be 28.0 (±0.7) kcal/mol and -15.7 (±1.7) cal K(-1) mol(-1), respectively, corresponding to a free energy of activation equal to 33 (±4) kcal/mol at 25 °C. Hence, mandelate racemase stabilizes the altered trifluorolactate in the transition state (ΔG(tx)) by at least 20 kcal/mol.
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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".