Publication Date:
2011-11-19
Description:
Nitrogenase is a complex enzyme that catalyzes the reduction of dinitrogen to ammonia. Despite insight from structural and biochemical studies, its structure and mechanism await full characterization. An iron-molybdenum cofactor (FeMoco) is thought to be the site of dinitrogen reduction, but the identity of a central atom in this cofactor remains unknown. Fe Kbeta x-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) of intact nitrogenase MoFe protein, isolated FeMoco, and the FeMoco-deficient nifB protein indicates that among the candidate atoms oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon, it is carbon that best fits the XES data. The experimental XES is supported by computational efforts, which show that oxidation and spin states do not affect the assignment of the central atom to C(4-). Identification of the central atom will drive further studies on its role in catalysis.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3800678/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3800678/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Lancaster, Kyle M -- Roemelt, Michael -- Ettenhuber, Patrick -- Hu, Yilin -- Ribbe, Markus W -- Neese, Frank -- Bergmann, Uwe -- DeBeer, Serena -- R01 GM067626/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- R01-GM 67626/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2011 Nov 18;334(6058):974-7. doi: 10.1126/science.1206445.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22096198" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Azotobacter vinelandii/chemistry
;
Biocatalysis
;
Carbon/*chemistry
;
Ligands
;
Models, Molecular
;
Molecular Structure
;
Molybdoferredoxin/*chemistry/metabolism
;
Nitrogen/chemistry
;
Oxidation-Reduction
;
Oxygen/chemistry
;
Spectrometry, X-Ray Emission
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
Permalink