Electron Transfer Coupled to Conformational Dynamics in Cell Respiration

Cellular respiration is a fundamental process required for energy production in many organisms. The terminal electron transfer complex in mitochondrial and many bacterial respiratory chains is cytochrome c oxidase (C c O). This converts the energy released in the cytochrome c /oxygen redox reaction into a transmembrane proton electrochemical gradient that is used subsequently to power ATP synthesis. Despite detailed knowledge of electron and proton transfer paths, a central question remains as to whether the coupling between electron and proton transfer in mammalian mitochondrial forms of C c O is mechanistically equivalent to its bacterial counterparts. Here, we focus on the conserved span between H376 and G384 of transmembrane helix (TMH) X of subunit I. This conformationally-dynamic section has been suggested to link the redox activity with the putative H pathway of proton transfer in mammalian C c O. The two helix X mutants, Val380Met (V380M) and Gly384Asp (G384D), generated in the genetically-tractable yeast C c O, resulted in a respiratory-deficient phenotype caused by the inhibition of intra-protein electron transfer and C c O turnover. Molecular aspects of these variants were studied by long timescale atomistic molecular dynamics simulations performed on wild-type and mutant bovine and yeast C c Os. We identified redox- and mutation-state dependent conformational changes in this span of TMH X of bovine and yeast C c Os which strongly suggests that this dynamic module plays a key role in optimizing intra-protein electron transfers.