Bím D, Alexandrova AN. Electrostatic regulation of blue copper sites.
Chem Sci 2021;
12:11406-11413. [PMID:
34667549 PMCID:
PMC8447924 DOI:
10.1039/d1sc02233d]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/21/2021] [Accepted: 07/26/2021] [Indexed: 01/06/2023] Open
Abstract
In the last 50 years, the blue copper proteins became central targets of investigation. Extensive experiments focused on the Cu coordination to probe the effect of local perturbations on its properties. We found that local electric fields, generated by charged residues evolutionarily placed throughout the protein edifice, mainly second sphere, but also more remotely, constitute an additional significant factor regulating blue copper proteins. These fields are not random, but exhibit a highly specific directionality, negative with respect to the and vectors in the Cu first shell. The field magnitude contributes to fine-tuning of the geometric and electronic properties of Cu sites in individual blue copper proteins. Specifically, the local electric fields evidently control the Cu–SMet bond distance, Cu(ii)–SCys bond covalency, and the energies of the frontier molecular orbitals, which, in turn, govern the Cu(ii/i) reduction potential and the relative absorption intensities at 450 nm and 600 nm.
Intramolecular electric fields in blue copper proteins are oriented in a fixed way to modulate properties of their copper sites: they control the first-shell copper interactions to influence geometric, spectroscopic, and redox behavior.![]()
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