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JOURNALS // Mendeleev Communications // Archive

Mendeleev Commun., 2008 Volume 18, Issue 2, Pages 63–66 (Mi mendc3247)

This article is cited in 8 papers

How mechanical energy of phosphorylating enzymes transforms into the energy of chemical bonds?

A. L. Buchachenko, D. A. Kouznetsov

N.N. Semenov Federal Research Center for Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russian Federation

Abstract: Recent discovery of huge magnesium isotope effect in the rate of enzymatic synthesis of ATP offers a new insight on the mechanochemistry of enzymes as the molecular machines. The activity of magnesium-dependent enzymes (ATPase, phosphocreatine, phosphoglycerate kinases), in which Mg2+ ion has a magnetic isotope nucleus 25Mg, was found to be two or three times higher than that of enzymes in which the Mg2+ ion has nonmagnetic, spinless isotopic nuclei 24Mg or 26Mg. This isotope effect demonstrates unambiguously that the ATP synthesis is a spin-dependent process in which the Mg2+ ion is a reagent. It transforms mechanical energy of unequilibrium conformations of enzyme macromolecule into the energy of the P–O bond in ATP.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1016/j.mencom.2008.03.001



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