Molecular mechanics studies of factors affecting overall rate in cascade reactions: Multi‐enzyme colocalization and environment

Millions of years of evolution have optimized many biosynthetic pathways by use of multi‐step catalysis. In addition, multi‐step metabolic pathways are commonly found in and on membrane‐bound organelles in eukaryotic biochemistry. The fundamental mechanisms that facilitate these reaction processes provide strategies to bioengineer metabolic pathways in synthetic chemistry. Using Brownian dynamics simulations, here we modeled intermediate substrate transportation of colocalized yeast–ester biosynthesis enzymes on the membrane. The substrate acetate ion traveled from the pocket of aldehyde dehydrogenase to its target enzyme acetyl‐CoA synthetase, then the substrate acetyl CoA diffused from Acs1 to the active site of the next enzyme, alcohol‐O‐acetyltransferase. Arranging two enzymes with the smallest inter‐enzyme distance of 60 Å had the fastest average substrate association time as compared with anchoring enzymes with larger inter‐enzyme distances. When the off‐target side reactions were turned on, most substrates were lost, which suggests that native localization is necessary for efficient final product synthesis. We also evaluated the effects of intermolecular interactions, local substrate concentrations, and membrane environment to bring mechanistic insights into the colocalization pathways. The computation work demonstrates that creating spatially organized multi‐enzymes on membranes can be an effective strategy to increase final product synthesis in bioengineering systems.