Three new n-alkyl dithiocarbamate compounds, as sodium salts, C₄H₉NHCS₂Na (I), C₆H₁₃NHCS₂Na (II) and C₈H₁₇NHCS₂Na (III), were synthesized and examined for inhibition of both cresolase and catecholase activities of mushroom tyrosinase (MT) from a commercial source of Agaricus bisporus in 10 mM phosphate buffer pH 6.8, at 293K using UV spectrophotometry. Caffeic acid and p-coumaric acid were used as natural substrates for the enzyme for the catecholase and cresolase reactions, respectively. Lineweaver–Burk plots showed different patterns of mixed and competitive inhibition for catecholase and cresolase reactions, respectively. These new synthetic compounds can be classified as potent inhibitors of MT due to K_i values of 0.8, 1.0 and 1.8 μM for cresolase inhibitory activity, and also 9.4, 14.5 and 28.1 μM for catecholase inhibitory activity for I, II and III, respectively. They showed a greater potency in the inhibitory effect towards the cresolase activity of MT. Both substrate and inhibitor can be bound to the enzyme with negative cooperativity between the binding sites (α>1) and this negative cooperativity increases with increasing length of the aliphatic tail in these compounds. The inhibition mechanism is presumably related to the chelating of the binuclear coppers at the active site and the different K_i values may be related to different interaction of the aliphatic chains of I, II and III with the hydrophobic pocket in the active site of the enzyme.

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