Within Cu-containing electron transfer active sites, the role of the axial ligand in type 1 sites is well defined, yet its role in the binuclear mixed-valent Cu A sites is less clear. Recently, the mutation of the axial Met to Leu in a Cu A site engineered into azurin (Cu A Az) was found to have a limited effect on E 0 relative to this mutation in blue copper (BC). Detailed low-temperature absorption and magnetic circular dichroism, resonance Raman, and electron paramagnetic resonance studies on Cu A Az (WT) and its M123X (X = Q, L, H) axial ligand variants indicated stronger axial ligation in M123L/H. Spectroscopically validated density functional theory calculations show that the smaller ΔE 0 is attributed to H 2 O coordination to the Cu center in the M123L mutant in Cu A but not in the equivalent BC variant. The comparable stabilization energy of the oxidized over the reduced state in Cu A and BC (Cu A ∼ 180 mV; BC ∼ 250 mV) indicates that the S(Met) influences E 0 similarly in both. Electron delocalization over two Cu centers in Cu A was found to minimize the Jahn-Teller distortion induced by the axial Met ligand and lower the inner-sphere reorganization energy. The Cu-S(Met) bond in oxidized Cu A is weak (5.2 kcal/ mol) but energetically similar to that of BC, which demonstrates that the protein matrix also serves an entatic role in keeping the Met bound to the active site to tune down E 0 while maintaining a low reorganization energy required for rapid electron transfer under physiological conditions. spectroscopy | reduction potential | energy transduction pathway L ong-range electron transfer (ET) is vital to a wide range of biological processes, including two key energy transduction pathways essential for life: H 2 O oxidation in photosynthesis and O 2 reduction in respiration (1, 2). Nature has adapted a conserved cupredoxin fold motif (i.e., the Greek-key β barrel) to construct two evolutionarily linked, but structurally distinct Cucontaining ET proteins (3-5). These are the mononuclear type 1 (T1) or blue copper (BC) and binuclear purple Cu A proteins. The first coordination sphere of the classic BC sites [e.g., plastocyanin (Pc) and azurin (Az)] consists of a trigonally distorted tetrahedral environment where Cu resides in an equatorial plane formed by one S(Cys) and two N(His) ligands and has an axial S (Met) ligand (Fig. 1A) (Fig. 1B) (8-11). Both sites carry out rapid, efficient longrange ET with rates on the order of 10 3 -10 5 s −1 (12, 13).Although BC proteins use a Cu + /Cu 2+ redox couple, the binuclear Cu A sites use a (Cu 1+ -Cu 1+ )/(Cu 1.5+ -Cu 1.5+ ) redox cycle. The oxidized form of Cu A is mixed-valent (MV), with a highly covalent Cu 2 S 2 core that gives rise to its unique spectroscopic features. The unpaired electron is fully delocalized over the two Cu centers and exhibits a characteristic seven-line 63,65 Cu hyperfine splitting pattern in electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy (14, 15). Maintaining valence delocalization even in the presence of a low symmetry protein ...