Metals bound to proteins perform a number of crucial biological reactions, including the oxidation of water by a manganese cluster in photosystem II. Although evolutionarily related to photosystem II, bacterial reaction centers lack both a strong oxidant and a manganese cluster for mediating the multielectron and proton transfer needed for water oxidation. In this study, carboxylate residues were introduced by mutagenesis into highly oxidizing reaction centers at a site homologous to the manganese-binding site of photosystem II. In the presence of manganese, light-minus-dark difference optical spectra of reaction centers from the mutants showed a lack of the oxidized bacteriochlorophyll dimer, while the reduced primary quinone was still present, demonstrating that manganese was serving as a secondary electron donor. On the basis of these steady-state optical measurements, the mutant with the highest-affinity site had a dissociation constant of approximately 1 microM. For the highest-affinity mutant, a first-order rate with a lifetime of 12 ms was observed for the reduction of the oxidized bacteriochlorophyll dimer by the bound manganese upon exposure to light. The dependence of the amplitude of this component on manganese concentration yielded a dissociation constant of approximately 1 muM, similar to that observed in the steady-state measurements. The three-dimensional structure determined by X-ray diffraction of the mutant with the high-affinity site showed that the binding site contains a single bound manganese ion, three carboxylate groups (including two groups introduced by mutagenesis), a histidine residue, and a bound water molecule. These reaction centers illustrate the successful design of a redox active metal center in a protein complex.

Cooperative binary ionic (CBI) solids comprise a versatile new class of opto-electronic and catalytic materials consisting of ionically self-assembled pairs of organic anions and cations. Herein, we report CBI nanocomposites formed by growing nanoparticles of one type of porphyrin CBI solid onto a second porphyrin CBI substructure with complementary functionality.

The influence of hydrogen bonds on the electronic structure of the light-harvesting I complex from Rhodobacter sphaeroides has been examined by site-directed mutagenesis, steady-state optical spectroscopy, and Fourier-transform resonance Raman spectroscopy. Shifts of 4-23 nm in the Q(y) absorption band were observed in seven mutants with single or double changes at Leu alpha44, Trp alpha43, and Trp beta48. Resonance Raman spectra were consistent with the loss of a hydrogen bond with the alteration of either Trp alpha43 or Trp beta48 to Phe. However, when the Trp alpha43 to Phe alteration is combined with Leu alpha44 to Tyr, the spectra show that the loss of the hydrogen bond to alpha43 is compensated by the addition of a new hydrogen bond to Tyr alpha44. Comparison of the absorption and vibrational spectra of the seven mutants suggests that changes in the absorption spectra can be interpreted as being due to both structural and hydrogen-bonding changes. To model these changes, the structural and hydrogen bond changes are considered to be independent of each other. The calculated shifts agree within 1 nm of the observed values. Excellent agreement is also found assuming that the structural changes arise from rotations of the C3-acetyl group conformation and hydrogen bonding. These results provide the basis for a simple model that describes the effect of hydrogen bonds on the electronic structures of the wild-type and mutant light-harvesting I complexes and also is applicable for the light-harvesting II and light-harvesting III complexes. Other possible effects of the mutations, such as changes in the disorder of the environment of the bacteriochlorophylls, are discussed.

Energy transfer from Rhodobacter sphaeroides light-harvesting complex I (LHI) to the reaction center (RC) was investigated with steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. Chromatophores isolated from a strain containing LHI with the mutation RTrp43 to Phe (LHI mutant) and strains containing either the LHI mutant with wild-type RCs (LHI mutant + WT RC) or the LHI mutant with the RC mutations LH-(L131)+LH(M160)+FH(M197) (LHI mutant + T1 RC) were investigated at 294 and 77 K. In the LHI mutant, absorption and fluorescence spectra were blue-shifted by 21 nm compared to wild-type LHI. The energy transfer from mutated LHI to the RC occurs about two times faster than energy transfer from wild-type LHI to the RC. The acceleration of energy transfer is consistent with the increase in the energy transfer rate estimated from the spectral overlap between the RC absorbance and the LHI fluorescence according to Fo ¨rster energy transfer theory.

Crystals have been obtained of wild-type reaction centers from Rhodobacter sphaeroides using manganese chloride as a precipitating agent. The crystals belong to the tetragonal space group P4 2 22, with unit-cell parameters a = b = 207.8, c = 107.5 Å . The crystal structure has been determined to a resolution limit of 4.6 Å using a previously determined structure of the reaction center as a molecular-replacement model. The calculated electron-density maps show the presence of a manganese ion at one of the crystal contact points bridging two symmetry-related histidine residues, suggesting that the metal plays a key role in facilitating the crystallization of the protein in this form.