Jumpstarting the cytochrome P450 catalytic cycle with a hydrated electron.

Cytochrome P450cam (CYP101Fe) regioselectively hydroxylates camphor. Possible hydroxylating intermediates in the catalytic cycle of this well-characterized enzyme have been proposed on the basis of experiments carried out at very low temperatures and shunt reactions, but their presence has not yet been validated at temperatures above 0 °C during a normal catalytic cycle. Here, we demonstrate that it is possible to mimic the natural catalytic cycle of CYP101Fe by using pulse radiolysis to rapidly supply the second electron of the catalytic cycle to camphor-bound CYP101[FeO] Judging by the appearance of an absorbance maximum at 440 nm, we conclude that CYP101[FeOOH] (compound 0) accumulates within 5 μs and decays rapidly to CYP101Fe, with a of 9.6 × 10 s All processes are complete within 40 μs at 4 °C. Importantly, no transient absorbance bands could be assigned to CYP101[FeOpor] (compound 1) or CYP101[FeO] (compound 2). However, indirect evidence for the involvement of compound 1 was obtained from the kinetics of formation and decay of a tyrosyl radical. 5-Hydroxycamphor was formed quantitatively, and the catalytic activity of the enzyme was not impaired by exposure to radiation during the pulse radiolysis experiment. The rapid decay of compound 0 enabled calculation of the limits for the Gibbs activation energies for the conversions of compound 0 → compound 1 → compound 2 → CYP101Fe, yielding a Δ of 45, 39, and 39 kJ/mol, respectively. At 37 °C, the steps from compound 0 to the iron(III) state would take only 4 μs. Our kinetics studies at 4 °C complement the canonical mechanism by adding the dimension of time.