Predicting the Reactivity of Nitrile-Carrying Compounds with Cysteine: A Combined Computational and Experimental Study

Here, we report on a mechanistic investigation based on DFT calculations and kinetic measures aimed at determining the energetics related to the cysteine nucleophilic attack on nitrile-carrying compounds. Activation energies were found to correlate well with experimental kinetic measures of reactivity with cysteine in phosphate buffer. The agreement between computations and experiments points to this DFT-based approach as a tool for predicting both nitrile reactivity toward cysteines and the toxicity of nitriles as electrophile agents.