Broken Symmetry DFT Calculations/Analysis for Oxidized and Reduced Dinuclear Center in Cytochrome c Oxidase: Relating Structures, Protonation States, Energies, and Mössbauer Properties in ba3 Thermus thermophilus.

Abstract

The Fea33+···CuB2+ dinuclear center (DNC) structure of the as-isolated oxidized ba3 cytochrome c oxidase (CcO) from Thermus thermophilus (Tt) is still not fully understood. When the proteins are initially crystallized in the oxidized state, they typically become radiolyticly reduced through X-ray irradiation. Several X-ray crystal structures of reduced ba3 CcO from Tt are available. However, depending on whether the crystals were prepared in a lipidic cubic phase environment or in detergent micelles, and whether the CcO’s were chemically or radiolyticly reduced, the X-ray diffraction analysis of the crystals showed different Fea32+···CuB+ DNC structures. On the other hand, Mössbauer spectroscopic experiments on reduced and oxidized ba3 CcOs from Tt (Zimmermann et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 1988, 85, 5779–5783) revealed multiple 57Fea32+ and 57Fea33+ components. Moreover, one of the 57Fea33+ components observed at 4.2 K transformed from a proposed “low-spin” state to a different high-spin species when the temperature was increased above 190 K, whereas the other high-spin 57Fea33+ component remained unchanged. In the current Article, in order to understand the heterogeneities of the DNC in both Mössbauer spectra and X-ray crystal structures, the spin crossover of one of the 57Fea33+ components, and how the coordination and spin states of the Fea33+/2+ and Cu2+/1+ sites relate to the heterogeneity of the DNC structures, we have applied density functional OLYP calculations to the DNC clusters established based on the different X-ray crystal structures of ba3 CcO from Tt. As a result, specific oxidized and reduced DNC structures related to the observed Mössbauer spectra and to spectral changes with temperature have been proposed. Our calculations also show that, in certain intermediate states, the His233 and His283 ligand side chains may dissociate from the CuB+ site, and they may become potential proton loading sites during the catalytic cycle.