HEAVY HEART ENZYME REVEALS PROTEIN-PROMOTING VIBRATIONS

摘要

Chemists have proposed, on the basis of computational simulations, that small motions of proteins on the time scale of femtoseconds to picoseconds-called protein-promoting vibrations-help reactants cross the chemical barrier in the transition state. Now Vern Schramm and colleagues test this hypothesis experimentally for a biochemically important and well-studied enzyme, human heart lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). It catalyzes the last step of anaerobic glycolysis, the reduction of pyruvate to L-lactate (DOI: 10.1021/ jacs.6b09049).