Redox center

Figure 1.9 Examples of functionally important intrinsic metal atoms in proteins, (a) The di-iron center of the enzyme ribonucleotide reductase. Two iron atoms form a redox center that produces a free radical in a nearby tyrosine side chain. The iron atoms are bridged by a glutamic acid residue and a negatively charged oxygen atom called a p-oxo bridge. The coordination of the iron atoms is completed by histidine, aspartic acid, and glutamic acid side chains as well as water molecules, (b) The catalytically active zinc atom in the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase. The zinc atom is coordinated to the protein by one histidine and two cysteine side chains. During catalysis zinc binds an alcohol molecule in a suitable position for hydride transfer to the coenzyme moiety, a nicotinamide, [(a) Adapted from P. Nordlund et al., Nature 345 593-598, 1990.)...

Further improvements can be achieved by replacing the oxygen with a non-physiological (synthetic) electron acceptor, which is able to shuttle electrons from the flavin redox center of the enzyme to the surface of the working electrode. Glucose oxidase (and other oxidoreductase enzymes) do not directly transfer electrons to conventional electrodes because their redox center is surroimded by a thick protein layer. This insulating shell introduces a spatial separation of the electron donor-acceptor pair, and hence an intrinsic barrier to direct electron transfer, in accordance with the distance dependence of the electron transfer rate (11) ... 

Describe various routes for facilitating the electrical communication between the redox center of glucose oxidase and an electrode surface. 

This respiratory complex consists of 13 subunits, of which the three largest are encoded on mtDNA and contain the redox centers. Complex IV is involved in a greater diversity of defects affecting human skeletal muscle than any other respiratory complex. 

A great variety of suitable polymers is accessible by polymerization of vinylic monomers, or by reaction of alcohols or amines with functionalized polymers such as chloromethylat polystyrene or methacryloylchloride. The functionality in the polymer may also a ligand which can bind transition metal complexes. Examples are poly-4-vinylpyridine and triphenylphosphine modified polymers. In all cases of reactively functionalized polymers, the loading with redox active species may also occur after film formation on the electrode surface but it was recognized that such a procedure may lead to inhomogeneous distribution of redox centers in the film... 

In acetonitrile containing trace amounts of water, siloxane type connections lead to simultaneous attachment to surface groups and crosslinking between redox centers. 

Theories neglect that catalysts usually have limited turnover numbers due to destructive side reactions. This may not be so obvious in analytical experiments but it has severe consequences for large scale applications. A simple calculation can illustrate this problem if a redox polymer with a monomer molecular weight of 400 Da and a density of 1 g cm " is considered with all redox centers addressable from the electrode and accessible to the substrate with a turnover number of 1000, then, to react 1 nunol of substrate at a 1 cm electrode surface, at least 5 pmol of active catalyst centers corresponding to 2 mg of polymer, or a dry film thickness of 20 pm are required. This is 20 times more than the calculated optimum film thickness for rather favorable conditions... 

The field of modified electrodes spans a wide area of novel and promising research. The work dted in this article covers fundamental experimental aspects of electrochemistry such as the rate of electron transfer reactions and charge propagation within threedimensional arrays of redox centers and the distances over which electrons can be transferred in outer sphere redox reactions. Questions of polymer chemistry such as the study of permeability of membranes and the diffusion of ions and neutrals in solvent swollen polymers are accessible by new experimental techniques. There is hope of new solutions of macroscopic as well as microscopic electrochemical phenomena the selective and kinetically facile production of substances at square meters of modified electrodes and the detection of trace levels of substances in wastes or in biological material. Technical applications of electronic devices based on molecular chemistry, even those that mimic biological systems of impulse transmission appear feasible and the construction of organic polymer batteries and color displays is close to industrial use. 

Further interesting redox modified polypyrrole films were prepared e.g. a polymeric copper phenanthroline complex that can be reversibly de- and re-metallated because it retains the pseudotetrahedral environment after decomple-xation, A very diversified electrochemistry is displayed by polypyrrole films containing electron donor as well as electron acceptor redox centers in the same film... 

The group of the be complexes comprises bci complexes in mitochondria and bacteria and bef complexes in chloroplasts. These complexes are multisubunit membrane proteins containing four redox centers in three subunits cytochrome b (cytochrome be in bef complexes) comprising two heme b centers in a transmembrane arrangement, cyto-... 

Fig. 9. Arrangement of redox centers in D. gigas hydrogenase. Edge-to-edge distances are indicated.

The interaction of the partially reduced Ni-C form with the [4Fe4S] proximal cluster has been studied in D. gigas hydrogenase (103). From these studies it has been possible to predict the distance between the two redox centers. The value agrees well with that observed in the crystal structure (Fig. 9). In the readily available as-... 

Two ferredoxins were isolated and purified from D. vulgaris Miyazaki. Fdl, the major form, contains two redox centers with distinct behavior and a high sequence homology to D. africanus Fdlll (73). The protein is a dimer of a polypeptide chain of 61 amino acids with 7 cysteines. D. vulgaris Miyazaki Fdll is a dimer of 63 amino acids, containing 7 cysteines but only one [4Fe-4S] cluster (73-75). 

We will use here the main results obtained for two complex and distinct situations the structural and spectroscopic information gathered for D. gigas [NiFe] hydrogenase and AOR, in order to discuss relevant aspects related to magnetic interaction between the redox centers, intramolecular electron transfer, and, finally, interaction with other redox partners in direct relation with intermolecular electron transfer and processing of substrates to products. 

Fe-4S] + + clusters are certainly the most ubiquitous iron-sulfur centers in biological systems. They play the role of low potential redox centers in ferredoxins, membrane-bound complexes of the respiratory... 

The redox potentials of iron-sulfur centers vary considerably, depending on the type of center (242) and its environment in the protein (243), ranging from about -700 mV in the case of some [4Fe-4S] centers (244, 245) to about +450 mV in the case of some [4Fe-4S] centers (246). Iron-sulfur centers therefore act as redox centers in numerous electron transfer systems, including the respiratory and photo synthetic bioenergetic chains as well as a wide variety of redox enzymes. Among the many studies that have dealt with these systems, some have yielded structural information of the kind described in Section III. Most of them were designed, however, to measure the... 

EPR studies on electron transfer systems where neighboring centers are coupled by spin-spin interactions can yield useful data for analyzing the electron transfer kinetics. In the framework of the Condon approximation, the electron transfer rate constant predicted by electron transfer theories can be expressed as the product of an electronic factor Tab by a nuclear factor that depends explicitly on temperature (258). On the one hand, since iron-sulfur clusters are spatially extended redox centers, the electronic factor strongly depends on how the various sites of the cluster are affected by the variation in the electronic structure between the oxidized and reduced forms. Theoret-... 

The many redox reactions that take place within a cell make use of metalloproteins with a wide range of electron transfer potentials. To name just a few of their functions, these proteins play key roles in respiration, photosynthesis, and nitrogen fixation. Some of them simply shuttle electrons to or from enzymes that require electron transfer as part of their catalytic activity. In many other cases, a complex enzyme may incorporate its own electron transfer centers. There are three general categories of transition metal redox centers cytochromes, blue copper proteins, and iron-sulfur proteins. 

Iron-sulfur proteins. In an iroinsulfiir protein, the metal center is surrounded by a group of sulfur donor atoms in a tetrahedral environment. Box 14-2 describes the roles that iron-sulfur proteins play in nitrogenase, and Figure 20-30 shows the structures about the metal in three different types of iron-sulfur redox centers. One type (Figure 20-30a l contains a single iron atom bound to four cysteine ligands. The electron transfer reactions at these centers... 

There are three general types of iron-sulfur redox centers (a) a single iron atom (brown) surrounded by four cysteine sulfur atoms (yellow) (b) two iron atoms bound to two cysteines and a pair of bridging sulfide ligands and (c) a cubelike stracture consisting of four irons and four sulfiirs. 

Xanthine dehydrogenase that mediates the conversion of hypoxanthine into xanthine and uric acid has been studied extensively since it is readily available from cow s milk. It has also been studied (Leimkiihler et al. 2004) in the anaerobic phototroph Rhodobacter capsulatus, and the crystal structures of both enzymes have been solved. Xanthine dehydrogenase is a complex flavoprotein containing Mo, FAD, and [2Fe-2S] redox centers, and the reactions may be rationalized (Hille and Sprecher 1987) ... 

Figure 19. Scheme describing the redox switch, which is based on a viologen redox center incorporated within the nanoclusters ligand shell. For simplification the counterelectrode is not shown. (Adapted with permission from Ref [34], 2000, Nature Publishing Group.)... 

---