Intrinsic Nucleophilicity of Inverting and Retaining Glycoside Hydrolases Revealed Using Carbasugar Glyco-Tools

Abstract

Hydrolyses of cyclohexenyl-based carbasugars that mimic either α-d-glucose or α-d-galactose were explored with two Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron enzymes from glycoside hydrolase family 97: an inverting α-glucosidase (BtGH97a) and a retaining α-galactosidase (BtGH97b). Both enzymes yield nucleophilic substitutions at the pseudo-anomeric center of the carbasugar substrates, giving significantly different linear energy relationships for the catalytic rate constant as a function of the leaving group ability. Specifically, the kinetic data for the inverting α-glucosidase is consistent with the reaction giving a hydrolyzed inverted carbaglucose product by a mechanism that proceeds with little nucleophilic participation by the bound water molecule at the reaction transition state. In contrast, the reaction of carbagalactose substrates with the retaining GH97 enzyme involves a rate-limiting nonchemical step, likely a conformational change, followed by rapid substitution involving a nucleophilic amino acid residue to give a covalently bound intermediate. Considering the structural similarities between these two GH97 enzymes, the kinetic data nonetheless reveal a significant (>106) difference in the rates of nucleophilic attack between the unique enzymatic nucleophiles─with the less nucleophilic species being H2O in the inverting α-glucosidase and the better nucleophile being a carboxylate in the retaining α-galactosidase. The enzymatic rate constant ratio for the phenyl carbasugars contrasts with the corresponding kinetic data obtained using natural substrate phenyl glycopyranosides. Last, for the galactocarbasugar with a phenol leaving group, the second-order rate constant for alkylation of the GH97 α-galactosidase is only ∼10-fold lower than that for glycosylation of this enzyme by the parent carbohydrate phenyl α-d-galactopyranoside. This modest difference in rate constants underscores our conclusion that retaining glycoside hydrolases may not have optimized the nucleophilicity of their active site nucleophiles with the result that the transition state free energies for formation and hydrolysis of the covalent enzyme intermediate are matched.