Abstract
A GREAT deal of interest and discussion has followed Koshland's suggestion that “orbital steering” is a major influence in the acceleration of chemical reactions by enzymes1. He has defined two effects influencing rates, the proximity and orientation effects2, which are characteristic of enzyme catalysis and which might be responsible for the extreme specificity and catalytic power of enzymes. He has attempted to study the orientation effect in isolation and has postulated a very strong dependence of reaction rate on the precise relative orientation of atomic orbitals on the reacting atoms, calling this effect orbital steering1. We have calculated the relevant overlap integrals for a model series of compounds in an attempt to discover whether the enormous rate differences observed in enzyme catalysis could reasonably be explained in this way.
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References
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PORT, G., RICHARDS, W. Orbital Steering and the Catalytic Power of Enzymes. Nature 231, 312–313 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1038/231312a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/231312a0
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