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Intricate role of water in proton transport through cytochrome c oxidase.

ABSTRACT: Cytochrome c oxidase (CytcO), the final electron acceptor in the respiratory chain, catalyzes the reduction of O(2) to H(2)O while simultaneously pumping protons across the inner mitochondrial or bacterial membrane to maintain a transmembrane electrochemical gradient that drives, for example, ATP synthesis. In this work mutations that were predicted to alter proton translocation and enzyme activity in preliminary computational studies are characterized with extensive experimental and computational analysis. The mutations were introduced in the D pathway, one of two proton-uptake pathways, in CytcO from Rhodobacter sphaeroides . Serine residues 200 and 201, which are hydrogen-bonded to crystallographically resolved water molecules halfway up the D pathway, were replaced by more bulky hydrophobic residues (Ser200Ile, Ser200Val/Ser201Val, and Ser200Val/Ser201Tyr) to query the effects of changing the local structure on enzyme activity as well as proton uptake, release, and intermediate transitions. In addition, the effects of these mutations on internal proton transfer were investigated by blocking proton uptake at the pathway entrance (Asp132Asn replacement in addition to the above-mentioned mutations). Even though the overall activities of all mutant CytcO's were lowered, both the Ser200Ile and Ser200Val/Ser201Val variants maintained the ability to pump protons. The lowered activities were shown to be due to slowed oxidation kinetics during the P(R) ? F and F ? O transitions (P(R) is the "peroxy" intermediate formed at the catalytic site upon reaction of the four-electron-reduced CytcO with O(2), F is the oxoferryl intermediate, and O is the fully oxidized CytcO). Furthermore, the P(R) ? F transition is shown to be essentially pH independent up to pH 12 (i.e., the apparent pK(a) of Glu286 is increased from 9.4 by at least 3 pK(a) units) in the Ser200Val/Ser201Val mutant. Explicit simulations of proton transport in the mutated enzymes revealed that the solvation dynamics can cause intriguing energetic consequences and hence provide mechanistic insights that would never be detected in static structures or simulations of the system with fixed protonation states (i.e., lacking explicit proton transport). The results are discussed in terms of the proton-pumping mechanism of CytcO.

SUBMITTER: Lee HJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3005615 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Intricate role of water in proton transport through cytochrome c oxidase.

Lee Hyun Ju HJ Svahn Emelie E Swanson Jessica M J JM Lepp Håkan H Voth Gregory A GA Brzezinski Peter P Gennis Robert B RB

Journal of the American Chemical Society 20101021 45

Cytochrome c oxidase (CytcO), the final electron acceptor in the respiratory chain, catalyzes the reduction of O(2) to H(2)O while simultaneously pumping protons across the inner mitochondrial or bacterial membrane to maintain a transmembrane electrochemical gradient that drives, for example, ATP synthesis. In this work mutations that were predicted to alter proton translocation and enzyme activity in preliminary computational studies are characterized with extensive experimental and computation ...[more]

PMID: 20964330

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Project description:Cytochrome c oxidase (CytcO) is a membrane-bound enzyme, which catalyzes the reduction of di-oxygen to water and uses a major part of the free energy released in this reaction to pump protons across the membrane. In the Rhodobacter sphaeroides aa? CytcO all protons that are pumped across the membrane, as well as one half of the protons that are used for O? reduction, are transferred through one specific intraprotein proton pathway, which holds a highly conserved Glu286 residue. Key questions that need to be addressed in order to understand the function of CytcO at a molecular level are related to the timing of proton transfers from Glu286 to a "pump site" and the catalytic site, respectively. Here, we have investigated the temperature dependencies of the H/D kinetic-isotope effects of intramolecular proton-transfer reactions in the wild-type CytcO as well as in two structural CytcO variants, one in which proton uptake from solution is delayed and one in which proton pumping is uncoupled from O? reduction. These processes were studied for two specific reaction steps linked to transmembrane proton pumping, one that involves only proton transfer (peroxy-ferryl, P?F, transition) and one in which the same sequence of proton transfers is also linked to electron transfer to the catalytic site (ferryl-oxidized, F?O, transition). An analysis of these reactions in the framework of theory indicates that that the simpler, P?F reaction is rate-limited by proton transfer from Glu286 to the catalytic site. When the same proton-transfer events are also linked to electron transfer to the catalytic site (F?O), the proton-transfer reactions might well be gated by a protein structural change, which presumably ensures that the proton-pumping stoichiometry is maintained also in the presence of a transmembrane electrochemical gradient. Furthermore, the present study indicates that a careful analysis of the temperature dependence of the isotope effect should help us in gaining mechanistic insights about CytcO.

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Intricate role of water in proton transport through cytochrome c oxidase.

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Intricate role of water in proton transport through cytochrome c oxidase.

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