Iron complexes metalloporphyrins

Certain dinuclear iron complexes are found to be efficient catalysts for the oxidation of primary and secondary alcohols with hydrogen peroxide.214 Metalloporphyrins are used as peroxidase mimics in the oxidation of phenol with hydrogen peroxide. 

This chapter will describe the detailed mechanisms of 02 activation by a main representative of each class of hemoproteins. Then, efforts to mimic oxygenases by using model systems based on metalloporphyrins will be reviewed. In fact, metalloporphyrin model systems have proved to be useful for three main objectives. The first is to determine the detailed structure of the iron complexes... 

Besides copper and iron complexes, many other metal complexes are able to cleave DNA. The corresponding results will be presented in this Section, except when the ligand is a porphyrin (see Section II,E for DNA cleavage by metalloporphyrins). Complexes are classified by increasing atomic number of the metal center [for a previous review article, more focused on DNA probing by metal complexes rather than on DNA cleavage, see Pyle and Barton 161)]. 

It has been widely accepted that the high-valent iron oxo complex 1 is the active oxidant in metalloporphyrin systems and in non-porphyrin iron complex systems as well. A high-valent iron oxo species can be formed via heterolytic 0-0 bond cleavage of the iron-hydroperoxide 2 or of the iron-peroxyacid species 4 (Figure 5, pathway A). Recently, elegant proof of this heterolytic 0-0 bond cleavage of hydrogen peroxide, MCPBA, and f-butyl hydroperoxide has been provided by Traylor et al in iron porphyrin... 

One-electron oxidation of the vinylidene complex transforms it from an Fe=C axially symmetric Fe(ll) carbene to an Fe(lll) complex where the vinylidene carbon bridges between iron and a pyrrole nitrogen. Cobalt and nickel porphyrin carbene complexes adopt this latter structure, with the carbene fragment formally inserted into the metal-nitrogen bond. The difference between the two types of metalloporphyrin carbene, and the conversion of one type to the other by oxidation in the case of iron, has been considered in a theoretical study. The comparison is especially interesting for the iron(ll) and cobalt(lll) carbene complexes Fe(Por)CR2 and Co(Por)(CR2) which both contain metal centers yet adopt... 

These reports sparked off an extensive study of metalloporphyrin-catalyzed asymmetric epoxidation, and various optically active porphyrin ligands have been synthesized. Although porphyrin ligands can make complexes with many metal ions, mainly iron, manganese, and ruthenium complexes have been examined as the epoxidation catalysts. These chiral metallopor-phyrins are classified into four groups, on the basis of the shape and the location of the chiral auxiliary. Class 1 are C2-symmetric metalloporphyrins bearing the chiral auxiliary at the... 

The inhibition of lipid peroxidation by metalloporphyrins apparently depends on metal ions because only compounds with transition metals were efficient inhibitors. Therefore, the most probable mechanism of inhibitory effects of metalloporphyrins should be their disuniting activity. Manganese metalloporphyrins seem to be more effective inhibitors than Trolox (/5o = 204 pmol I 1) and rutin (/50 112 pmol I 1), and practically equal to SOD (/50= 15 pmol I 1). The mechanism of inhibitory activity of manganese and zinc metalloporphyrins might be compared with that of copper- and iron-flavonoid complexes [167,168], which exhibited enhanced antiradical properties due to additional superoxide-dismuting activity. 

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