Abstract
Methanol does not detectably compete with water in carboxypeptidase-catalyzed cleavage of any substrate, although it is preferentially reactive in a model for the proposed nucleophilic mechanism for the enzyme that involves an anhydride intermediate. To test for such a common intermediate in the cleavage of related peptide and ester substrates, a method has been developed to examine H2(16)O-H2(18)O kinetic isotope-partitioning effects. The finding that benzoylglycylphenylalanine has an isotope effect of 1.019 +/- 0.002 while benzoylglycyl-beta-L-phenyl-lactate shows a small inverse isotope effect excludes most versions of a nucleophilic mechanism having a common anhydride intermediate. The bulk of the available evidence strongly favors the previously proposed general base mechanism.
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