“…Oxidation-reduction reactions involve either outersphere electron transfer, as in the blue copper proteins, the Cu A site of cytochrome c oxidase and nitrous oxide reductase, or inner-sphere electron transfer in the binding, activation, and reduction of dioxygen, superoxide, nitrite, and nitrous oxide. The copper sites in the redox proteins have historically been divided into three classes based on their spectroscopic features, which reflect the geometric and electronic structure of the active site: type 1 (T1) or blue copper, type 2 (T2) or normal copper, and type 3 (T3) or coupled binuclear copper centres (Malkin and Malmström, 1970;Reinhammar, 1984;Solomon et al, 1992;Kaim and Rall, 1996) ( Table 1). Over the last 20 years, this list has expanded to include the trinuclear copper clusters (comprised of one type 2 and one type 3 centre) (Table 1) (Allendorf et al, 1985;Messerschmidt et al, 1992), the mixed-valent binuclear Cu A site (Agostinelli et al, 1995;Iwata et al, 1995;Tsukihara et al, 1995), the Cu B -heme A centre of cytochrome c oxidase (Kaim and Rall, 1996;Malmström, 1990), and the binuclear Cu Z centre of nitrous oxide reductase (Farrar et al, 1991).…”