((S)-3-Amino-(difluoromethylenyl)cyclopent-1-ene-1-carboxylic
acid (OV329) is a recently discovered inactivator of γ-aminobutyric
acid aminotransferase (GABA-AT), which has 10 times better inactivation
efficiency than its predecessor, CPP-115, despite the only structural
difference being an endocyclic double bond in OV329. Both compounds
are mechanism-based enzyme inactivators (MBEIs), which inactivate
GABA-AT by a similar mechanism. Here, a combination of a variety of
computational chemistry tools and experimental methods, including
quantum mechanical (QM) calculations, molecular dynamic simulations,
progress curve analysis, and deuterium kinetic isotope effect (KIE)
experiments, are utilized to comprehensively study the mechanism of
inactivation of GABA-AT by CPP-115 and OV329 and account for their
experimentally obtained global kinetic parameters k
inact and K
I. Our first key
finding is that the rate-limiting step of the inactivation mechanism
is the deprotonation step, and according to QM calculations and the
KIE experiments, k
inact accurately represents
the enhancement of the rate-limiting step for the given mechanism.
Second, the present study shows that the widely used simple QM models
do not accurately represent the geometric criteria
that are present in the enzyme for the deprotonation step. In contrast,
QM cluster models successfully represent both the ground state destabilization
and the transition state stabilization, as revealed by natural bond
orbital analysis. Furthermore, the globally derived K
I values for both of the inactivators represent the inhibitor
constants for the initial binding complexes (K
d) and indicate the inactivator competition with the substrate
according to progress curve analysis and the observed binding isotope
effect. The configurational entropy loss accounts for the difference
in K
I values between the inactivators.
The approach we describe in this work can be employed to determine
the validity of globally derived parameters in the process of MBEI
optimization for given inactivation mechanisms.