CHEM 412 Final: CHEM 413 Final Exam 2007
Document Summary
As we discussed in class, one of our goals as mechanistic enzymologists is to kill pathogens without killing patients. Conveniently enough, mycobacteria produce shikimic acid (as you may recall, the precursor of all of the aromatic amino acids), and require this pathway for survival. We, of course, do not have this pathway and have to eat stuff with aromatic amino acids in them (hence the term essential amino acids ). That makes this pathway a great target for drug design. The penultimate step in this pathway is the reduction of the unsaturated ketone in dehydroshikimate to produce shikimic acid, requiring nadph as the reducing agent. In a very recent paper1 the kinetics and mechanism of the enzyme catalyzing this reaction was studied in detail: (2 pts) ok, just in case you forgot the structure of nadph, here it is. Circle the pro-s hydrogen so that you can answer the next questions rationally.
