Tyrosine Analogues for Probing Proton-Coupled Electron Transfer Processes in Peptides and Proteins
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A series of amino acids analogous to tyrosine, but differing in the physicochemical properties of the aryl alcohol side chain, have been prepared and characterized. These compounds are expected to be useful in understanding the relationships between structure, thermodynamics, and kinetics in long-range proton-coupled electron transfer processes in peptides and proteins. Systematic changes in the acidity, redox potential, and O-H bond strength of the tyrosine side chain could be induced upon substituting the phenol for pyridinol and pyrimidinol moieties. Further modulation was possible by introducing methyl and t-butyl substitution in the position ortho to the phenolic hydroxyl. The unnatural amino acids were prepared by Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling of the corresponding halogenated aryl alcohol protected as their benzyl ethers with an organozinc reagent derived from N-Boc L-serine carboxymethyl ester. Subsequent debenzylation by catalytic hydrogenation yielded the tyrosine analogues in good yield. Spectrophotometric titrations revealed a decrease in tyrosine pK(a) of ca. 1.5 log units per included nitrogen atom, along with a corresponding increase in the oxidation (peak) potentials of ca. 200 mV, respectively. All told, the six novel amino acids described here have phenol-like side chains with pK(a)'s that span a range of 7.0 to greater than 10, and an oxidation (peak) potential range of greater than 600 mV at and around physiological pH. Radical equilibration EPR experiments were carried out to reveal that the O-H bond strengths increase systematically upon nitrogen incorporation (by ca. 0.5-1.0 kcal/mol), and radical stability and persistence increase systematically upon introduction of alkyl substitution in the ortho positions. The EPR spectra of the aryloxyl radicals derived from tyrosine and each of the analogues could be determined at room temperature, and each featured distinct spectral properties. The uniqueness of their spectra will be helpful in discerning one type of aryloxyl in the presence of other possible aryloxyl radicals in peptides and proteins with multiple tyrosine residues between which electrons and protons can be transferred.
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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".