Abstract2-Ethynylnaphthalene (2EN) is an effective mechanism-based inhibitor of CYP2B4. There are two inhibitory components, (1) irreversible inactivation of CYP2B4 (a typical time-dependent inactivation), and (2) a reversible component. The reversible component was unusual in that the degree of inhibition was not simply a characteristic of the enzyme-inhibitor interaction, but dependent on the size of the substrate molecule used to monitor residual activity. The effect of 2EN on the metabolism of seven CYP2B4 substrates showed that it was not an effective reversible inhibitor of substrates containing a single aromatic ring; substrates with two fused rings were competitively inhibited by 2EN; and larger substrates were non-competitively inhibited. Energy-based docking studies demonstrated that, with increasing substrate size, the energy of 2EN and substrate co-binding in the active site became unfavorable precisely at the point where 2EN became a competitive inhibitor. Hierarchical docking revealed potential allosteric inhibition sites separate from the substrate binding site.Cytochrome P450 refers to a superfamily of enzymes that catalyze the oxidation of a wide variety of exogenous and endogenous chemicals. The enzyme system most commonly supports oxygen insertion into a substrate molecule, generating a hydroxylated product; however, the initial monooxygenation can lead to a wide variety of reactions such as dealkylation, oxidative deamination, sulfoxidation, and epoxidation (1).The broad substrate selectivity of the P450 enzymes is due not only to the multiplicity of P450 enzymes, but also due to the characteristics of the active site. The active site for several of the P450 enzymes has been shown to be relatively large and capable of binding and metabolizing substrates of diverse chemical size and structure. A consequence of the large active site is its ability to accommodate multiple substrate/effector molecules. This effect is most commonly associated with CYP3A4 (2;3), where the presence of multiple compounds within the active site has been shown to alter the kinetics to exhibit cooperativity (4;5), and both substrate and product inhibition (2;6). The binding of multiple substrate/inhibitor molecules has also been documented for CYP2C9 (4), CYP ERYF (7;8), and P450 cam (9). The presence of active sites on other P450 enzymes that are sufficiently large to bind multiple ligands is clearly possible and likely, based on the relative size of the ligands as compared to the active sites of these nonspecific enzymes. 2-Ethynylnaphthalene (2EN) is a selective mechanism-based inhibitor of CYP2B4. CYP2B4 catalyzes the conversion of 2EN to the highly reactive intermediate, 2-naphthylacetic acid, which covalently modifies the apoprotein and results in its inactivation (10;11). In addition to its ability to inhibit CYP2B4-mediated reactions, 2EN could also act as a reversible inhibitor of both CYP1A1 and CYP1A2 (12). Although earlier studies reported that 2EN could act as a mechanism-based inhibitor of CYP1A proteins (...