The axial ligands of heme in cytochromes: a near-infrared magnetic circular dichroism study of yeast cytochromes c, c1, and b and spinach cytochrome f.

Room temperature near-infrared magnetic circular dichroism and low-temperature electron paramagnetic resonance measurements have been used to characterize the ligands of the heme iron in mitochondrial cytochromes c, c1, and b and in cytochrome f of the photosynthetic electron transport chain. The MCD data show that methionine is the sixth ligand of the heme of oxidized yeast cytochrome c1; the identify of this residue is inferred to be the single conserved methionine identified from a partial alignment of the available cytochrome c1 amino acid sequences. A different residue, which is most likely lysine, is the sixth heme ligand in oxidized spinach cytochrome f. The data for oxidized yeast cytochrome b are consistent with bis-histidine coordination of both hemes although the possibility that one of the hemes is ligated by histidine and lysine cannot be rigorously excluded. The neutral and alkaline forms of oxidized yeast cytochrome c have spectroscopic properties very similar to those of the horse heart proteins, and thus, by analogy, the sixth ligands are methionine and lysine, respectively.