Vinylic carbon, ambient

nucleophilic and substrate

reaction

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What is Vinyl

Vinyl indicates the CH=CH2 functional group,

which can be formed by removing hydrogen from
ethylene molecule. Therefore, the general
molecular formula of vinyl compounds is RCH=CH2, where R is any other group of atoms.
Vinylic groups have sp2 hybridized carbon atoms.
These compounds are very reactive, and readily
polymerize to form vinyl polymers. Polyvinyl
chloride, polyvinyl fluoride, and polyvinyl acetate
are some examples of vinyl polymers. The Figure
1. Illustrates the mechanism of polyvinyl chloride
synthesis.

Vinylic carbon
On a carbon skeleton, sp2-hybridized
carbons or positions are often called
vinylic. Allyls, acrylates and styrenics
contain vinyl groups. (A styrenic crosslinker
with two vinyl groups is called divinyl
benzene.

An ambident nucleophile is an anionic

nucleophile whose negative charge is delocalized by
resonance over two unlike atoms or over two like but
non-equivalent atoms. The most common ambident
nucleophiles are enolate ions. For example, the
resonance forms of acetone enolate are shown below.

Ambident Nucleophile

An ambident nucleophile is an anionic

nucleophile whose negative charge is
delocalized by resonance over two unlike
atoms or over two like but non-equivalent
atoms. The most common ambident
nucleophiles are enolate ions. For example,
the resonance forms of acetone enolate are
shown below.

The hybrid can be drawn roughly as follows.

SUBSTRATE REACTION

A substrate is the substance upon which an enzyme acts in an enzymatic reaction. Enzymes are biological catalysts that
increase the rate of chemical reactions by decreasing the activation energy required for that reaction. An enzyme catalyzes
a chemical reaction converting a substrate reactant to a product. An individual enzyme generally has more than one
substrate and may be specific to several reaction intermediates that are part of an over-all reaction.

The three-dimensional structure of an enzyme determines its substrate binding specificity. A simple hypothesis proposed by
German chemist Emil Fischer in 1894 suggested that the specificity of an enzymatic reaction could be likened to a lock and
key. In the lock and key hypothesis, the geometric complementarity of the structures of the enzyme (the lock) and the
substrate (the key) accounts for the specificity of the reaction. Although scientists were not able to determine the actual
three-dimensional structures of enzymes and substrates until many years later, the basic idea of the lock-and-key
hypothesis has held. A more refined hypothesis, known as the induced fit hypothesis, proposes that the binding of the
substrate by the enzyme changes the structure of the enzyme, resulting in an even greater affinity of the enzyme for the
substrate. The site on an enzyme that binds the substrate (known simply as the substrate binding site) is most often a
pocket or cleft in the approximately globular structure of the enzyme.

The term substrate has another meaning in chemistry. Some chemical syntheses are carried out in mixed phases; for
example, the reactants exist in solution but the reaction itself occurs at the surface of a solid. The identity of the solid,
specified in experimental protocols, influences the synthesis reactions, and the solid is referred to as the substrate.

The Michaelis constant Km is defined as the substrate concentration at

1/2 the maximum velocity. This is shown in Figure 8. Using this constant
and the fact that Km can also be defined as:
Km=K-1 + K2 / K+1
K+1, K-1 and K+2 being the rate constants from equation (7). Michaelis
developed the following

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