Molecular orbital calculations of the active site complex of two iron ferredoxins

Abstract

The results presented here are the first part of a systematic theoretical study of some of the physical and biochemical properties of two iron ferredoxins obtained by the use of an Extended Huckel Self-Consistent Charge iteration method of molecular orbital calculations. In this initial study, attention is focused on the calculation of electronic energies as a function of molecular geometry and the nature of the bonding ligands at the active site in order to determine the most stable form of the active site complex. Included in the active site complex are two iron atoms, two acid labile sulfur atoms of unknown inorganic origin and four sulfur atoms presumably from nearby cysteine residues. Fifteen chemical-conformational variations of this basic active site complex were considered. Among these conformational variations of the sulfur ligands, Fe-Fe distances, bond lengths and angles and chemical variations such as the effect of axial ligands, disulfide bonds and added protons were included. Our results indicate that that with all reasonable variations of the ligands, the preferred molecular geometry about 4-coordinated Fe is tetrahedral rather than planar. The planar conformation is somewhat stabilized by the addition of axial ligands, but is still less favorable than the tetrahedral conformation. In this model, interactions between the two iron atoms occur automatically since they are both part of the same active site complex. Hence the absence of low temperature paramagnetism in the oxidized state is readily explained. Preliminary investigations of the reduced state with one additional electron indicate that the odd electron is delocalized, as observed in both ESR and ENDOR. Its presence apparently substantially destabilizes all of the molecular orbital energies in accord with the observation that only one electron can be added to these proteins without decomposing them.