Cytochromes oxygen-binding

The most conspicuous use of iron in biological systems is in our blood, where the erythrocytes are filled with the oxygen-binding protein hemoglobin. The red color of blood is due to the iron atom bound to the heme group in hemoglobin. Similar heme-bound iron atoms are present in a number of proteins involved in electron-transfer reactions, notably cytochromes. A chemically more sophisticated use of iron is found in an enzyme, ribo nucleotide reductase, that catalyzes the conversion of ribonucleotides to deoxyribonucleotides, an important step in the synthesis of the building blocks of DNA. 

Wilson MT, Antonini G, Malatesta F, et al. 1994. Probing the oxygen binding site of cytochrome c oxidase by cyanide. J Biol Chem 269(39) 24114-24119. 

Oxygen binds to iron in cytochrome P-450 and this allows the introduction of O into a C — H bond in substrate near the iron site, J. T. Groves, J. Chem. Educ. 62, 928 (1985). 

A single turnover study of the conversion of the heme-HO-1 complex to free biliverdin has elucidated the relative rates of the catalytic steps 129). This transient kinetic study indicates that the conversion of Fe heme to Fe verdoheme is biphasic. Electron transfer to the Fe -heme HO-1 complex occurred at a rate of 0.11 s at 4°C and 0.49 s at 25°C with a 0.1 1 ratio of NADPH-cytochrome P450 reductase to heme HO-l complex. Oxygen binding to the reduced iron was sufficiently rapid im-der the experimental conditions that the species actually monitored... 

Extensive work by Cheah (121, 122, 123, 128, 130), mainly with M. expansa, has shown that large cestodes possess a cytochrome chain which differs from the mammalian system in being branched and possessing multiple terminal oxidases (Fig. 5.11). One branch resembles the classical chain with cytochrome a3 as its terminal oxidase. The terminal oxidase of the alternative pathway, which branches at the level of rhodoquinone or vitamin K, is an o-type cytochrome. Cytochrome o is an autoxidisable b-type cytochrome which is commonly found in micro-organisms, parasitic protozoa and plants. The classical chain constitutes about 20% of the oxidase capacity in cestodes and cytochrome o is quantitatively the major oxidase. Cyanide-insensitive respiration - i.e. where oxygen uptake occurs in the presence of cyanide - is characteristic of most helminths (39). Cytochrome o binds cyanide much less strongly than cytochrome a3, and it seems reasonable, therefore, to equate cyanide-insensitive respiration with the non-classical pathway. 

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