Broken-Symmetry Density Functional Theory Analysis of the Ω Intermediate in Radical -Adenosyl-l-methionine Enzymes: Evidence for a Near-Attack Conformer over an Organometallic Species.

Radical -adenosyl-l-methionine (SAM) enzymes are found in all domains of life and catalyze a wide range of biochemical reactions. Recently, an organometallic intermediate, Ω, has been experimentally implicated in the 5'-deoxyadenosyl radical generation mechanism of the radical SAM superfamily. In this work, we employ broken-symmetry density functional theory to evaluate several structural models of Ω. The results show that the calculated hyperfine coupling constants (HFCCs) for the proposed organometallic structure of Ω are inconsistent with the experiment. In contrast, a near-attack conformer of SAM bound to the catalytic [4Fe-4S] cluster, in which the distance between the unique iron and SAM sulfur is ∼3 Å, yields HFCCs that are all within 1 MHz of the experimental values. These results clarify the structure of the ubiquitous Ω intermediate and suggest a paradigm shift reversal regarding the mechanism of SAM cleavage by members of the radical SAM superfamily.