Well-resolved, Soret band excited resonance Raman spectra were measured from the fully oxidized and fully reduced cytochrome c oxidase from beef heart and Paracoccus denitrificans. The vibrational patterns in the marker band region (1450-1700 cm-1) were analyzed, and a complete assignment of heme a and heme a3 vibrational modes is presented, permitting a detailed structural comparison of the mammalian and bacterial enzymes. Similar frequencies of the porphyrin modes for the reduced heme a and the reduced and oxidized heme a3 are found, indicating a close relationship of the ground-state conformations in all oxidase species studied. In oxidized heme a, however, significant frequency differences are observed and interpreted in terms of a ruffled porphyrin structure in the three- and two-subunit forms of the Paracoccus enzyme compared to the planar heme a of beef heart oxidase. The structural distortions, which also perturb the conformation of the formyl substituent and its electronic coupling with the porphyrin, reflect the specific heme-protein interactions at heme a. Since in the fully reduced state heme a appears to be largely planar in all oxidase species, the redox-linked conformational transition requires a more drastic rearrangement of the heme a-protein interactions in the bacterial than in the mammalian oxidase. For both heme a and heme a3 in the reduced state and for heme a3 in the oxidize state, frequency, intensity, and bandwidth differences of the formyl stretching vibration and intensity differences of some porphyrin modes are noted between the three oxidase forms. The same modes are also affected by quaternary structure changes in the bovine oxidase caused by different detergents and isolation procedures. These effects are attributed to differences of the dielectric properties of the heme environment, due to subtle structural changes in the heme pockets, induced by protein-protein interactions of subunit III with subunits I and/or II.