We have evaluated the 57Fe nuclear magnetic
resonance chemical shielding and Mössbauer electric
field
gradient tensors and their orientations for a cytochrome c
model compound as well as for isopropyl isocyanide
and carbon monoxy−myoglobin model systems and two simple
metalloporphyrins containing bis(pyridine)
and bis(trimethylphosphine) ligands, using Kohn−Sham density
functional theory. For cytochrome c we
used a model Fe(II) porphyrin structure together with a
1-methylimidazole base (to represent His-18) and a
dimethyl sulfide molecule (to represent Met-80 in the structure of
horse heart ferrocytochrome c), both located
at the X-ray coordinates for cyt c Fe(II). For the
Mb calculations, we used the coordinates of two recently
characterized metalloporphyrins:
(i-PrNC)(1-methylimidazole)(5,10,15,20-tetraphenylporphinato)Fe(II)
and
(CO)(1-methylimidazole)(5,10,15,20-tetraphenylporphinato)Fe(II),
while literature structures were used for
the bis-ligand adducts. We used a “locally dense” basis to
evaluate the 57Fe shieldings and electric
field
gradients at iron and compared them with the measured chemical shifts
and Mössbauer quadrupole splittings,
respectively. There is moderately good agreement between theory
and experiment for the cytochrome c and
Mb 57Fe chemical shifts and shielding tensors, and
very good (0.10 mm s-1 rmsd) agreement for
the 57Fe
Mössbauer quadrupole splittings, using the following basis sets
and functional: a Wachters' all electron
representation for iron, a 6-311++G(2d) basis for all atoms
directly attached to iron, 6-31G* for the second
shell and 3-21G* bases for the other more distant atoms, together with
a B3LYP hybrid exchange-correlation
functional. Extensive tests with other functionals and basis set
schemes are also reported. The shift and
electric field gradient tensor orientations are generally close to
obvious molecular symmetry axes, with the
skew of the shielding tensor reversing sign on transition from strong
to weak ligand fields. The paramagnetic
contribution to shielding overwhelmingly dominates overall shielding
and the variations seen between weak
ligand field (bis(pyridine), cytochrome c) and strong
ligand field (CO, PMe3, i-PrNC) systems.
Poor accord
between theory and experiment is obtained for the 57Fe
chemical shifts when MbCO models having highly
distorted X-ray geometries are employed, suggesting that the Fe−C−O
is close to the porphyrin normal,
both in solution and in the solid state.