Staphylococcus aureus uses IsdG and IsdI to convert
heme into a mixture of staphylobilin isomers, 15-oxo-β-bilirubin
and 5-oxo-δ-bilirubin, formaldehyde, and iron. The highly ruffled
heme found in the heme-IsdI and IsdG complexes has been proposed to
be responsible for the unique heme degradation products. We employed
resonance Raman (RR) and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopies
to examine the coordination and electronic structures of heme bound
to IsdG and IsdI. Heme complexed to IsdG and IsdI is coordinated by
a neutral histidine. The trans ligand is hydroxide in the ferric alkaline
form of both proteins. In the ferric neutral form at pH 6.0, heme
is six-coordinated with water as the sixth ligand for IsdG and is
in the mixture of the five-coordinated and six-coordinated species
for IsdI. In the ferrous CO-bound form, CO is strongly hydrogen bonded
with a distal residue. The marker lines, ν2 and ν3, appear at frequencies that are distinct from other proteins
having planar hemes. The EPR spectra for the ferric hydroxide and
cyanide states might be explained by assuming the thermal mixing of
the d-electron configurations, (d
xy
)2(d
xz
,d
yz
)3 and (d
xz
,d
yz
)4(d
xy
)1. The
fraction for the latter becomes larger for the ferric cyanide form.
In the ferric neutral state at pH 6.0, the quantum mechanical mixing
of the high and intermediate spin configurations might explain the
peculiar frequencies of ν2 and ν3 in the RR spectra. The heme ruffling imposed by IsdG and IsdI gives
rise to unique electronic structures of heme, which are expected to
modulate the first and subsequent steps of the heme oxygenation.