The pK a s of ferric aquo-heme and aquo-heme electrochemical midpoints (E m s) at pH 7 in sperm whale myoglobin, Aplysia myoblogin, hemoglobin I, heme oxygenase 1, horseradish peroxidase and cytochrome c oxidase were calculated with Multi-Conformation Continuum Electrostatics (MCCE). The pK a s span 3.3 pH units from 7.6 in heme oxygenase 1 to 10.9 in peroxidase, and the E m s range from -250 mV in peroxidase to 125 mV in Aplysia myoglobin. Proteins with higher in situ ferric aquo-heme pK a s tend to have lower E m s. Both changes arise from the protein stabilizing a positively charged heme. However, compared with values in solution, the protein shifts the aquo-heme E m s more than the pK a s. Thus, the protein has a larger effective dielectric constant for the protonation reaction, showing that electron and proton transfers are coupled to different conformational changes that are captured in the MCCE analysis. The calculations reveal a breakdown in the classical continuum electrostatic analysis of pairwise interactions. Comparisons with DFT calculations show that Coulomb's law overestimates the large unfavorable interactions between the ferric water-heme and positively charged groups facing the heme plane by as much as 60%. If interactions with Cu B in cytochrome c oxidase and Arg 38 in horseradish peroxidase are not corrected, the pK a calculations are in error by as much as 6 pH units. With DFT corrected interactions calculated pK a s and E m s differ from measured values by less than 1 pH unit or 35 mV, respectively. The in situ aquo-heme pK a is important for the function of cytochrome c oxidase since it helps to control the stoichiometry of proton uptake coupled to electron transfer [Song, Michonova-Alexova, and Gunner ( . Heme oxygenase is an essential protein in heme metabolism, using three O 2 s and seven electrons to degrade heme to biliverdin (3). Peroxidases reduce toxic hydrogen peroxide to water and then carry out one electron oxidization of a wide range of substrates (4,5). Cytochrome c oxidase is the terminal electron acceptor in the respiratory chain (6-9). Here Heme a 3 forms a binuclear center with a copper complex (Cu B ) that reduces O 2 to water. The protein uses the released chemical energy to pump protons across the membrane. Other five-coordinate heme proteins carry out NO storage and transport (10), steroid synthesis (11, 12), and O 2 , CO, and NO sensing (13,14).Hemes can carry out many biological functions because the protein, especially the active site residues, modulates the ligand binding specificity and resultant chemistry. The diversity of in situ heme functions highlights important interactions of proteins with their cofactors and substrates. Extensive studies have explored how ligand geometry (15-17) and the protein scaffolding (18) affect in situ heme properties (1). The range of redox free energy and pK a s of protein-bound hemes and their ligands show the importance of electrostatic interactions (19,20). For example, sixcoordinate bis-His-hemes have E m s ranging f...