Kinetic analysis of enzymatic chiral resolution by progress curve evaluation

Abstract

The present study deals with kinetic modeling of enzyme-catalyzed reactions by integral progress curve analysis, and shows how to apply this technique to kinetic resolution of enantiomers. It is shown that kinetic parameters for both enantiomers and the enantioselectivity of the enzyme may be obtained from the progress curve measurement of a racemate only. A parameter estimation procedure has been established and it is shown that the covariance matrix of the obtained parameters is a useful statistical tool in the selection and verification of the model structure. Standard deviations calculated from this matrix have shown that progress curve analysis yields parameter values with high accuracies. Potential sources of systematic errors in (multiple) progress curve analysis are addressed in this article. Amongst these, the following needed to be dealt with: (1) the true initial substrate concentrations were obtained from the final amount of product experimentally measured (mass balancing); (2) systematic errors in the initial enzyme concentration were corrected by incorporating this variable in the fitting procedure as an extra parameter per curve; and (3) enzyme inactivation is included in the model and a first-order inactivation constant is determined. Experimental verification was carried out by continuous monitoring of the hydrolysis of ethyl 2-chloropropionate by carboxylesterase NP and the α-chymotrypsin-catalyzed hydrolysis of benzoylalanine mathyl ester in a pH-stat system. Kinetic parameter values were obtained with high accuracies and model predictions were in good agreement with independent measurements of enantiomeric excess values or literature data. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.