Why Do Empirical Valence Bond Simulations Yield Accurate Arrhenius Plots?

Computer simulations of the temperature dependence of enzyme reactions using the empirical valence bond (EVB) method have proven to give very accurate results in terms of the thermodynamic activation parameters. Here, we analyze the reasons for why such simulations are able to correctly capture activation enthalpies and entropies and how sensitive these quantities are to parametrization of the reactive potential energy function. We examine first the solution reference reaction for the enzyme ketosteroid isomerase, which corresponds to the acetate catalyzed deprotonation of the steroid in water. The experimentally determined activation parameters for this reaction turn out to be remarkably well reproduced by the calculations. By modifying the EVB potential so that the activation and reaction free energies become significantly shifted, we show that the activation entropy is basically invariant to such changes and that Δ is instead determined by the specific mixture of the underlying force fields in the transition state region. The coefficients of this mixture do not change appreciably when the EVB potential is modified within reasonable limits, and hence, the estimate of Δ becomes very robust. This is further verified by examining a more complex concerted hydride and proton transfer reaction in the enzyme hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase.