Assignment of the ligand geometry and redox potentials of the trihaem ferricytochrome c3 from Desulfuromonas acetoxidans.

Cytochrome c551.5 is a trihaem cytochrome of the cytochrome c3 family isolated from Desulfuromonas acetoxidans. Although several X-ray structures are available for tetrahaem cytochromes of this family, there is no X-ray structure for trihaem cytochromes. Cytochrome C551.5 was studied in the oxidized form by means of two-dimensional NMR. The pattern of observed interhaem NOESY connectivities is in agreement with the haem core structure previously determined by NMR for the reduced protein [Coutinho, I. B., Turner, D. L., Liu, M. Y., LeGall, J. & Xavier, A. V. (1996) J. Biol. Inorg. Chem. 1, 305-311]. The similarities found between the haem core structure and the amino acid sequence of cytochrome c551.5 and those of tetrahaem cytochromes c3 allows each of the haems to be specifically assigned in the polypeptide sequence, and the attribution of the midpoint redox potentials to the individual haems. This also allows individual redox potentials to be assigned to each haem in the NMR spectrum. The paramagnetic shifts of the 13C resonances of the haem substituents were analyzed in terms of pi molecular orbitals with perturbed D4h symmetry. The parameters of this analysis have been shown to be controlled by the orientation of the axial ligands in several other bis-His-coordinated haems and hence the ligand geometry was deduced for cytochrome C551.5. The structural analogy between the relative haem plane orientations in cytochrome c551.5 and the tetrahaem cytochromes c3 is found to extend to the axial ligands with the largest differences being in the vicinity of the deleted fourth haem, using the numbering of cytochrome c3 haems.