Fumarate oxidation-reduction couple

Bacteria have been isolated using reduced anthraquinone-2,6-disulfonate (HjAQDS) as electron donor and nitrate as electron acceptor (Coates et al. 2002). The organisms belonged to the a-, p-, y-, and 5-subdivision of the Proteobacteria, and were able to couple the oxidation of H AQDS to the reduction of nitrate with acetate as the carbon source. In addition, a number of C2 and C3 substrates could be used including propionate, butyrate, fumarate, lactate, citrate, and pyruvate. 

Figure 18.2 Summary of respiratory energy flows. Foods ate converted into the reduced form of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NADH), a strong reductant, which is the most reducing of the respiratory electron carriers (donors). Respiration can he based on a variety of terminal oxidants, such as O2, nitrate, or fumarate. Of those, O2 is the strongest, so that aerobic respiration extracts the largest amount of free energy from a given amount of food. In aerobic respiration, NADH is not oxidized directly by O2 rather, the reaction proceeds through intermediate electron carriers, such as the quinone/quinol couple and cytochrome c. The most efficient respiratory pathway is based on oxidation of ferrocytochrome c (Fe ) with O2 catalyzed by cytochrome c oxidase (CcO). Of the 550 mV difference between the standard potentials of c)Tochrome c and O2, CcO converts 450 mV into proton-motive force (see the text for further details).

Fumarate is able to serve as an electron acceptor in anaerobic respiration, as it may be reduced reversibly to succinate in a two-electron process. The succinate-fumarate couple may therefore be utilized as an oxidant or reductant in the respiratory chain, and so differs from the other examples given in this section. These two reactions are catalyzed by succinate dehydrogenase and fumarate reductase, which have many similarities in subunit structure. These are shown in Table 29. Although they are different enzymes, the fumarate reductase can substitute for succinate dehydrogenase under certain conditions. The synthesis of succinate dehydrogenase is induced... 

All parasitic flatworms capable of anaerobic metabolism favour malate as the primary mitochondrial substrate and the oxidative decarboxylations of first malate and then pyruvate generate intramitochondrial reducing power in the form of NADH (Fig. 20.1). In contrast, the pathways used to reoxidize intramitochondrial NADH are quite diverse and depend on the stage or species of parasite under examination, but in all cases, redox balance is maintained and electron-transport associated ATP is generated by the NADH-reduction of fumarate to succinate. In the cestode, hi. diminuta, succinate and acetate are the major end products of anaerobic malate dismutation and are excreted in the predicted 2 1 ratio. In the trematode F. hepatica, succinate is then further decarboxylated to propionate with an additional substrate level phosphorylation coupled to the decarboxylation of methylmalonyl CoA. F. hepatica forms primarily propionate and acetate as end products, again in a ratio of 2 1 to maintain redox balance. 

Succinate quinone oxidoreductases (EC 1.3.5.1 Hagerhall, 1997 Lancaster, 2002a,b) are enzymes that couple the two-electron oxidation of succinate to fumarate (reaction 1) to the two-electron reduction of quinone to quinol (reaction 2). 

They can also catalyze the opposite reaction, the coupling of quinol oxidation to quinone to the reduction of fumarate to succinate (Lemma et al., 1991). The m-configuration isomer of fumarate, maleinate, is neither produced in the oxidation reaction nor consumed as a substrate in the reduction reaction, i.e, the reaction is stereospecific in both directions. Depending on the direction of the reaction catalyzed in vivo, the members of the superfamily of succinate quinone oxidoreductases... 

Several terminal electron acceptors are coupled to H2 oxidation. These include O2, nitrate, sulfate, carbon dioxide, fumarate, and halogenated organics. Electron donors that couple to proton reduction include pyruvate and carbon monoxide. The electron donors or acceptors for the D. desulfu-ricans Fe-only hydrogenase is cytochrome c3 or c6 (Guerlesquin et al., 1994 Verhagen et al., 1994). 

How eould this eatalytie bias be controlled One possibility is that the proton transfer pathway eould eontribute to specifieity (Peters et al., 1998). Another possibility is that differences in midpoint potential of the FeS clusters (or other redox sites) that constitute the intramolecular wire could be tuned to facilitate one of the two directions of the reaction. For example, these redox sites could best match the midpoint potentials of a particular oxidized or reduced electron carrier (Holm and Sander, 1999). Apparently, a conformational change in succinate dehydrogenase, coupled to the reduction of FAD, is responsible for its catalytic bias for fumarate reduction (Hirst et al., 1996). 

Complex II is the succinate dehydrogenase of the tricarboxylic acid, or Krebs, cycle and catalyzes the oxidation of succinate to fumarate, coupled to the reduction of UQ to ubiquinol. It is part of a large family of related succinate quinone oxidoreductases and quinol fumarate oxidoreductases found in bacteria and mitochondria that have been classified based on subunit structure, number of cytochrome b haem centers and class of quinone substrate [77, 78]. The mitochondrial form belongs to the class that has a single h type haem bound to one of... 

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