“…In order to elucidate the catalytic details of the active site of CA II, several mutational studies have been performed. Most of these variants have been focused at the zinc ion-binding site (Alexander et al, 1993;Kiefer et al, 1993;Ippolito & Christianson, 1994;Lesburg & Christianson, 1995;Huang et al, 1996;Lesburg et al, 1997), the hydrophilic side (protontransfer pathway; Behravan et al, 1990;Krebs, Ippolito et al, 1993;Xue et al, 1993;Ippolito et al, 1995;Huang et al, 2002;Tu et al, 2002;Fisher et al, 2005;Zheng et al, 2008;Turkoglu et al, 2012;Mikulski et al, 2013;Aggarwal et al, 2014) and the hydrophobic pocket (CO 2 -binding site; Alexander et al, 1991;Fierke et al, 1991;Krebs, Rana et al, 1993;West et al, 2012;Nair & Christianson, 1993). In the hydrophobic pocket, a series of mutational studies have been performed targeting the Val121, Val143 and Leu198 residues.…”