Creation of a binuclear purple copper site within a de novo coiled-coil protein

Biochemistry. 2012 Oct 9;51(40):7901-7. doi: 10.1021/bi3007884. Epub 2012 Sep 28.

Abstract

Although various kinds of metal binding proteins have been constructed by de novo design, the creation of a binuclear metal binding site remains especially challenging. The purple copper site in subunit II of COX, referred to as the Cu(A) site, has two copper ions bridged by two Cys residues. We constructed the Cu(A) site consisting of two Cys and two His residues in a de novo designed four-helical coiled-coil protein. The protein bound two copper ions and exhibited a purple color, with relatively intense absorption bands at 488 and 530 nm in the UV-vis spectrum. The EPR spectrum displayed unresolved hyperfine splittings in the g(∥) region, which was similar to the native or engineered Cu(A) site with an A(∼480)/A(∼530) > 1. The extended X-ray absorption structure analyses of the protein revealed the presence of the Cu(2)S(2) core structure, with two typical N(His)-Cu bonds per core at 1.90 Å, two S (Cys)-Cu bonds at 2.21 Å, and the Cu-Cu bond at 2.51 Å, which are also characteristic structures of a purple copper site.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Absorptiometry, Photon
  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Binding Sites
  • Color
  • Copper / chemistry
  • Copper / metabolism*
  • Electron Spin Resonance Spectroscopy
  • Electron Transport Complex IV / chemistry*
  • Electron Transport Complex IV / genetics
  • Electron Transport Complex IV / metabolism*
  • Models, Molecular
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Protein Binding
  • Protein Conformation
  • Protein Engineering

Substances

  • Copper
  • Electron Transport Complex IV