a b s t r a c tIn this work we present results of density functional theory (DFT) calculations on dicopper patellamides and their affinity for molecular oxygen and carbonate. Patellamides are cyclic octapeptides that are produced by a cyanobacterium, and may show promise as therapeutics. Thus, carbonate binding to a dicopper patellamide center gives a stable cyclic octapeptide with a twist of almost 90°. The system exists in closelying open-shell singlet and triplet spin states with two unpaired electrons in orthogonal r à orbitals on each metal center. Subsequently, we replaced carbonate with dioxygen and found a stable Cu 2 (l-O) 2 diamond shaped patellamide core. In this structure the original dioxygen bond is significantly weakened to essentially a single bond, which should enable the system to transfer these oxygen atoms to substrates. We predicted the IR and Raman spectra of the Cu 2 (l-O) 2 diamond shaped patellamide structure using density functional theory and found a considerable isotope effect on the O-O stretch vibration for 16 O 2 versus 18 O 2 bound structures. Our studies reveal that carbonate forms an extremely stable complex with dicopper patellamide, but that additional molecular oxygen to this system does not give a potential oxidant. Therefore, it is more likely that carbonate prepares the system for dioxygen binding by folding it into the correct configuration followed in the proposed catalytic cycle by a protonation event preceding dioxygen binding to enable the system to reorganize to form a stable Cu 2 (l-O) 2 -patellamide cluster. Alternatively, carbonate may act as an inhibitor that blocks the catalytic activity of the system. It is anticipated that the Cu 2 (l-O) 2 -patellamide structure is a potential active oxidant of the dicopper patellamide complex.Crown