The nature of the hydrogen bonding in complexes of alkylimidazoles and substituted carboxylic
acids has been studied as a model of the hydrogen-bonding interaction of the proton bridging Nδ1 of His 57
and the β carboxyl group of Asp 102 in the active site of chymotrypsin. The interaction has been postulated
to be a low barrier hydrogen bond (LBHB) in the enzyme and also in the model complexes which have a
small ΔpK
a. In the present study, enthalpies of complex formation, −ΔH
formation, between alkylimidazoles
(1-methyl, 1-n-butyl-, and 1-tert-butylimidazole) and a series of carboxylic acids were determined by adiabatic
solution calorimetry in chloroform. In FTIR studies presented here, the concentration of LBHB present in
these complexes was determined. For complexation between dichloropropionic acid and alkylimidazoles for
which the ΔpK
a is small in chloroform, the −ΔH
formation values varied from 12 to 15 kcal/mol. Thus in enzymes,
where ΔG is similar to ΔH, ΔG
formation can be as high as −12 to −15 kcal/mol for LBHBs. If a weak hydrogen
bond in the initial E·substrate complex with a ΔG
formation of ≤−5 kcal/mol is converted to a low barrier hydrogen
bond in the transition state, there will be 7−10 kcal/mol of energy available to lower the activation barrier and
accelerate the reaction by 5−7 orders of magnitude.