Cupredoxins copper-containing protein

Cupredoxins refer to a group of copper proteins that share the same overall structural fold and perform biological electron transfer (ET) through their redox reactivity. The term cupredoxin comes from ferredoxin, the Fe-containing redox proteins. Cupredoxins comprise one of the three classes of metalloproteins known to carry out biological electron transfer, after cytochromes (see Chapter 8.2) and ferredoxins (see Chapter 8.3). 

Type 1 copper proteins are the class of proteins for which cupredoxins were originally named. Type 1 copper proteins include both proteins with known electron transfer function (e.g., plastocyanin and rusticyanin), and proteins whose biological functions have not been determined conclusively (e.g., stellacyanin and plantacyanin). Although these proteins with unknown function cannot be called cupredoxins by the strict functional definition, they have been classified as cupredoxins because they share the same overall structural fold and metal-binding sites as cupredoxins. In addition, many multidomain proteins, such as laccase, ascorbate oxidase, and ceruloplasmin, contain multiple metal centers, one of which is a type 1 copper. Those cupredoxin centers are also included here. Finally, both the Cua center in cytochrome c oxidase (CcO) and nitrous oxide reductase (N2OR), and the red copper center in nitrocyanin will be discussed in this chapter because their metal centers are structurally related to the type 1 copper center and the protein domain that contains both centers share the same overall structural motif as those of cupredoxins. The Cua center also functions as an electron transfer agent. Like ferredoxins, which contain either dinuclear or tetranuclear iron-sulfur centers, cupredoxins may include either the mononuclear or the dinuclear copper center in their metal-binding sites. 

Despite a poor amino acid sequence homology, the mononuclear cupredoxin copper and purple Cua centers share strong structural homology of the cupredoxin fold as indicated by amino acid sequence alignment. This similarity has been confirmed by the availability of the crystal structures of proteins containing the purple Cua sites in native N2OR, soluble domain... 

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