Chemical composition of a ferredoxin isolated from cotton

Structure and function of chloroplast-type ferredoxins

Comparison of various chloroplast-type ferredoxin sequences, chemical and enzymic modifications, reconstitution experiments, and fluorescence measurement of chloroplast-type ferredoxins have led to the following conclusions. 1. Tyrosine, histidine, and tryptophan residues are not directly involved in the oxidation-reduction mechanism of ferredoxins. The four indispensible cysteine residues in spinach ferredoxin which constitutes a part of the iron-sulfur cluster are located at residues 39, 44. 47 and 77. Two out of six cysteine residues in Spirulina ferredoxin could be easily modified with vinylpyridine without the loss of reconstitutive ability i.e. the apoferredoxin could be converted to the holoform by the addition of iron and sulfide. 2. Spinach ferredoxin was digested with carboxypeptidase A and the terminal alanine could be removed without loss of the spectral properties of native ferredoxin. However, the removal of the terminal three residues gave rise to the loss of reconstitutive ability. 3. The amino groups of spinach ferredoxin were modified by acetic anhydride and four residues were acetylated. The acetylated preparation of ferredoxin had an unique spectrum. Upon the addition of high concentration of ions the spectrum of this derivative resembled the spectrum of native ferredoxin. Acetylferredoxin did not combine with ferredoxin-NADP reductase, but upon the addition of moderate concentrations of cations, it did bind to this enzyme.

Spectroscopic studies on two-iron ferredoxins

The application of magnetic resonance techniques to biological systems has permitted a detailed study of the nature of the active sites of many proteins that had not been possible previously. Among these is the whole class of iron—sulphur proteins which have been implicated as electron transport proteins in a variety of fundamental processes: photosynthesis, hydroxylation and nitrogen fixation to name but a few.

The single-iron proteins in this class, the rubredoxins, have been studied extensively by chemical, spectroscopic and X-ray crystallographic techniques (Lovenberg, 1973), and the active site is composed of a single iron atom bound in a distorted tetrahedron of cysteine sulphur ligands. The iron is high-spin ferric in the oxidized state and high-spin ferrous in the reduced state. This structure is shown in Fig. I (α).