Talk:Structural Biochemistry/Enzyme/Suicide Inhibitors

What is It?
Suicide inhibitors attach themselves to the enzyme's active site then inhibit its own irreversible inhibition. Rather than reversible forms of inhibition, suicide inhibitors bind as a substrate, and stay bound. This will begin a catalytic mechanism which will generate a fully functional and reactive intermediate. It is this intermediate that comes and inhibits the reaction by inactivating the enzyme through covalent modification, suggesting that the group being modified is very important for the catalysis functions of the enzyme. The inhibitors are highly specific, One can use these inhibitors to modify an active site in a highly specific manner, in fact, it is one of the most specific methods scientists use for this purpose.

Examples
Examples of suicide inhibitors used in medicine include those that are involved with the enzyme monoamine oxidase, associated with Parkinson disease through the levels of dopamine and serotonin levels in the  brain. (-)deprenly is a suicide inhibitor of monoamine oxidase and is used to treat both Parkinson disease and depression.

Over production of other suicide inhibitors can lead to microbial resistance. All beta-lactamase inhibitors are suicide inhibitors and an over production of these have been seen to be related to microbial resistance.