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Nature Chemical Biology 3, 537 - 538 (2007)
doi:10.1038/nchembio0907-537
Cleaving C-Hg bonds: two thiolates are better than one
Susan M Miller1
- Susan M. Miller is in the Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of California San Francisco, 600 16th Street, San Francisco, California 94158-2517, USA. e-mail: smiller@cgl.ucsf.edu
Abstract
Organomercurial lyase (MerB) catalyzes the difficult cleavage of C-Hg bonds to hydrocarbon and mercuric dithiol products. Model compounds providing two or three thiolate ligands activate organomercurials toward acidic cleavage under mild conditions, which supports a mechanism in which MerB enzymes use two conserved active-site cysteines to activate the substrate.
