The phenomenon of entropy-enthalpy (S-H) compensation is widely invoked as an explanatory principle in thermodynamic analyses of proteins, ligands, and nucleic acids. It has been suggested that this compensation is an intrinsic property of either complex, fluctuating, or aqueous systems. The questions examined here are whether the observed compensation is extra-thermodynamic (i.e., reflects anything more than the wellknown laws of statistical thermodynamics) and if so, what does it reveal about the system? Compensation is rather variably defined in the literature and different usages are discussed. The most precise and interesting one, which is considered here, is a linear relationship between ⌬H and ⌬S for some series of perturbations or changes in experimental variable. Some recent thermodynamic data on proteins purporting to show compensation is analyzed and shown to be better explained by other causes. A general statistical mechanical model of a complex system is analyzed to explore whether and under what conditions extrathermodynamic compensation can occur and what it reveals about the system. This model shows that the most likely behavior to be seen is linear S-H compensation over a rather limited range of perturbations with a compensation temperature Tc ס d⌬H/d⌬S within 20% of the experimental temperature. This behavior is insensitive to the details of the model, thus revealing little extra-thermodynamic or causal information about the system. In addition, it will likely be difficult to distinguish this from more trivial forms of compensation in real experimental systems.
Keywords: Entropy-enthalpy compensation; protein thermodynamicsThe phenomenon of entropy-enthalpy compensation (referred to hereafter as compensation) is widely invoked as an explanatory principle in thermodynamic analyses of proteins, ligands, and nucleic acids. A far-from-exhaustive literature search in biological and chemical databases using the keywords entropy, enthalpy, and compensation yields >200 references to date. The term entropy-enthalpy compensation, however, is applied variably in this literature. The phenomena described by this term can be grouped into four categories, as follows:(1) The concomitant increase in S and H with temperature, basically, a restatement of the thermodynamic definitionswhere H, S, and T are the enthalpy, entropy, and absolute temperatures, respectively, and the derivatives are taken at constant pressure. Depending on whether Cp is temperature dependent or not and the range of temperatures examined, a plot of H versus S for a series of experiments at different temperatures may appear linear.(2) For some series of perturbations or changes in experimental variable other than temperature, ⌬S and ⌬H have the same sign. This is referred to here as the weak form of compensation. Examination of the statistical mechanical definitions of S and H in terms of the partition function (e.g., Hill 1986) shows that they depend in the same qualitative way on the distribution of the system among different en...