Flipping of a Non‐productive Substrate Binding Conformation Facilitates Hydroxynitrile Lyase Catalyzed Hydrocyanation

, that destabilizes the non-productive substrate binding state thereby facilitating its transition to the catalytically productive conformation and significantly enhancing catalytic efficiency. Crystallographic studies provide a structural description of the factors that stabilize versus destabilize the different binding conformers in the different enzyme variants and thus the differing catalytic efficiencies. These findings demonstrate that destabilizing unfavorable substrate binding conformations within an enzyme active site can improve functionality and provide a promising strategy for designing efficient biocatalysts.