Kinetics of proton and electron transfer in heme-copper oxidases

Abstract: Heme-copper oxidases are transmembrane proteins that are found in aerobic and anaerobic respiratory chains. During aerobic respiration, these enzymes reduce dioxygen to water. The energy released in the reaction is used to transport protons across a biological membrane. Stored as proton electrochemical gradient, the energy can be used to regenerate ATP. It is known that aa3 oxidases, which are the most common oxidases, transport pumped protons and protons used for the catalytic reaction using two proton pathways. However, the molecular mechanism of pumping is still being debated.When oxygen is available in very small quantities, oxygen reductases with high affinity for oxygen are expressed by organisms like Thermus thermophilus. The proton pumping mechanism in the ba3 oxidase is slightly different from that of aa3 oxidases as this enzyme only uses a single proton uptake pathway. Here we analyzed the reaction mechanism of ba3 oxidase and found evidence that the first proton taken up by the four-electron reduced ba3 oxidase is transferred to a site distant from the catalytic site, the pump site, and that only every second proton taken up from solution is pumped. Data obtained from studies using site-directed mutagenesis and flow-flash spectroscopy suggest a probable location of the pump site.Under anaerobic conditions, some organisms are able to generate a proton- motive force using nitrate and nitrite as electron acceptors. In this process, the cytotoxic reaction intermediate nitric oxide is produced. Nitric oxide reductase (NOR), a deviant heme-copper oxidase that reduces NO to the rather harmless N2O, does not pump any protons. The catalytic mechanism of nitric oxide reduction by NOR is very poorly understood.Here we demonstrate that substrate inhibition, which occurs in NOR from Paracoccus denitrificans above 5 μM NO, can already be observed before the electrons from the low-spin hemes re-distribute to the active site. Furthermore, we found that a single specific proton pathway is used for proton-transfer leading from the periplasm to the active site.