JCVI-syn3A, a robust minimal cell with a 543 kbp genome and 493 genes, provides a versatile platform to study the basics of life. Using the vast amount of experimental information available on its precursor, Mycoplasma mycoides capri, we assembled a near-complete metabolic network with 98% of enzymatic reactions supported by annotation or experiment. The model agrees well with genome-scale in vivo transposon mutagenesis experiments, showing a Matthews correlation coefficient of 0.59. The genes in the reconstruction have a high in vivo essentiality or quasi-essentiality of 92% (68% essential), compared to 79% in silico essentiality. This coherent model of the minimal metabolism in JCVI-syn3A at the same time also points toward specific open questions regarding the minimal genome of JCVI-syn3A, which still contains many genes of generic or completely unclear function. In particular, the model, its comparison to in vivo essentiality and proteomics data yield specific hypotheses on gene functions and metabolic capabilities; and provide suggestions for several further gene removals. In this way, the model and its accompanying data guide future investigations of the minimal cell. Finally, the identification of 30 essential genes with unclear function will motivate the search for new biological mechanisms beyond metabolism.

The naturally widespread process of electron transfer from metal reducing bacteria to extracellular solid metal oxides entails unique biomolecular machinery optimized for long-range electron transport. To perform this function efficiently, microorganisms have adapted multiheme c-type cytochromes to arrange heme cofactors into wires that cooperatively span the cellular envelope, transmitting electrons along distances greater than 100 Å. Implications and opportunities for bionanotechnological device design are selfevident. However, at the molecular level, how these proteins shuttle electrons along their heme wires, navigating intraprotein intersections and interprotein interfaces efficiently, remains a mystery thus far inaccessible to experiment. To shed light on this critical topic, we carried out extensive quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics simulations to calculate stepwise heme-to-heme electron transfer rates in the recently crystallized outer membrane deca-heme cytochrome MtrF. By solving a master equation for electron hopping, we estimate an intrinsic, maximum possible electron flux through solvated MtrF of 10 4 -10 5 s −1 , consistent with recently measured rates for the related multiheme protein complex MtrCAB. Intriguingly, our calculations show that the rapid electron transport through MtrF is the result of a clear correlation between heme redox potential and the strength of electronic coupling along the wire: thermodynamically uphill steps occur only between electronically well-connected stacked heme pairs. This observation suggests that the protein evolved to harbor low-potential hemes without slowing down electron flow. These findings are particularly profound in light of the apparently well-conserved staggered cross-heme wire structural motif in functionally related outer membrane proteins.respiration | density functional theory

Multi-haem cytochromes are employed by a range of microorganisms to transport electrons over distances of up to tens of nanometres. Perhaps the most spectacular utilization of these proteins is in the reduction of extracellular solid substrates, including electrodes and insoluble mineral oxides of Fe(III) and Mn(III/IV), by species of Shewanella and Geobacter. However, multihaem cytochromes are found in numerous and phylogenetically diverse prokaryotes where they participate in electron transfer and redox catalysis that contributes to biogeochemical cycling of N, S and Fe on the global scale. These properties of multi-haem cytochromes have attracted much interest and contributed to advances in bioenergy applications and bioremediation of contaminated soils. Looking forward, there are opportunities to engage multi-haem cytochromes for biological photovoltaic cells, microbial electrosynthesis and developing bespoke molecular devices. As a consequence, it is timely to review our present understanding of these proteins and we do this here with a focus on the multitude of functionally diverse multi-haem cytochromes in Shewanella oneidensis MR-1. We draw on findings from experimental and computational approaches which ideally complement each other in the study of these systems: computational methods can interpret experimentally determined properties in terms of molecular structure to cast light on the relation between structure and function. We show how this synergy has contributed to our understanding of multi-haem cytochromes and can be expected to continue to do so for greater insight into natural processes and their informed exploitation in biotechnologies.

Simulation of charge transport in organic semiconducting materials requires the development of strategies for very fast yet accurate estimation of electronic coupling matrix elements for electron transfer between organic molecules (transfer integrals, Hab). A well-known relation that is often exploited for this purpose is the approximately linear dependence of electronic coupling with respect to the overlap of the corresponding diabatic state wave functions for a given donor-acceptor pair. Here we show that a single such relation can be established for a large number of different π-conjugated organic molecules. In our computational scheme the overlap of the diabatic state wave function is simply estimated by the overlap of the highest singly occupied molecular orbital of donor and acceptor, projected on a minimum valence shell Slater-type orbital (STO) basis with optimized Slater decay coefficients. After calibration of the linear relation, the average error in Hab as obtained from the STO orbital overlap is a factor of 1.9 with respect to wave function-theory validated DFT calculations for a diverse set of π-conjugated organic dimers including small arenes, arenes with S, N, and O heteroatoms, acenes, porphins, and buckyballs. The crucial advantage of the scheme is that the STO orbital overlap calculation is analytic. This leads to speedups of 6 orders of magnitude with respect to reference DFT calculations, with little loss of accuracy in the regime relevant to charge transport in organics.

Electron-transporting multi-heme cytochromes are essential to the metabolism of microbes that inhabit soils and carry out important biogeochemical processes. Recently the first crystal structure of a prototype bacterial deca-heme cytochrome (MtrF) has been resolved and its electrochemistry characterized. However, the molecular details of electron transport along heme chains in the cytochrome are difficult to access via experiment due to the nearly identical chemical nature of the heme cofactors. Here we employ large-scale molecular dynamics simulations to compute the redox potentials of the 10 hemes of MtrF in aqueous solution. We find that as a whole they fall within a range of ∼0.3 V, in agreement with experiment. Individual redox potentials give rise to a free energy profile for electron transport that is approximately symmetric with respect to the center of the protein. Our calculations indicate that there is no significant potential bias along the orthogonal octa-and tetra-heme chains, suggesting that under aqueous conditions MtrF is a nearly reversible two-dimensional conductor.

The bacterium Shewanella oneidensis has evolved a sophisticated electron transfer (ET) machinery to export electrons from the cytosol to extracellular space during extracellular respiration. At the heart of this process are decaheme proteins of the Mtr pathway, MtrC and MtrF, located at the external face of the outer bacterial membrane. Crystal structures have revealed that these proteins bind 10 c-type hemes arranged in the peculiar shape of a staggered cross that trifurcates the electron flow, presumably to reduce extracellular substrates while directing electrons to neighboring multiheme cytochromes at either side along the membrane. Especially intriguing is the design of the heme junctions trifurcating the electron flow: they are made of coplanar and T-shaped heme pair motifs with relatively large and seemingly unfavorable tunneling distances. Here, we use electronic structure calculations and molecular simulations to show that the side chains of the heme rings, in particular the cysteine linkages inserting in the space between coplanar and T-shaped heme pairs, strongly enhance electronic coupling in these two motifs. This results in an ≈103-fold speedup of ET steps at heme junctions that would otherwise be rate limiting. The predicted maximum electron flux through the solvated proteins is remarkably similar for all possible flow directions, suggesting that MtrC and MtrF shuttle electrons with similar efficiency and reversibly in directions parallel and orthogonal to the outer membrane. No major differences in the ET properties of MtrC and MtrF are found, implying that the different expression levels of the two proteins during extracellular respiration are not related to redox function.

Multi-heme proteins have attracted much attention recently due to their prominent role in mediating extracellular electron transport (ET), but one of their key fundamental properties, the rate constants for ET between the constituent heme groups, have so far evaded experimental determination. Here we report the set of heme-heme theoretical ET rate constants that define electron flow in the tetra-heme protein STC by combining a novel projector-operator diabatization approach for electronic coupling calculation with molecular dynamics simulation of ET free energies. On the basis of our calculations, we find that the protein limited electron flux through STC in the thermodynamic downhill direction (heme 1→4) is ∼3 × 10 s. We find that cysteine linkages inserting in the space between the two terminal heme pairs 1-2 and 3-4 significantly enhance the overall electron flow, by a factor of about 37, due to weak mixing of the sulfur 3p orbital with the Fe-heme d orbitals. While the packing density model, and to a higher degree, the pathway model of biological ET partly capture the predicted rate enhancements, our study highlights the importance of the atomistic and chemical nature of the tunneling medium at short biological tunneling distances. Cysteine linkages are likely to enhance electron flow also in the larger deca-heme proteins MtrC and MtrF, where heme-heme motifs with sub-optimal edge-to-edge distances are used to shuttle electrons in multiple directions.

The free energy profile for electron flow through the bacterial decahaem cytochrome MtrF has been computed using thermodynamic integration and classical molecular dynamics. The extensive calculations on two versions of the structure help to validate the method and results, because differences in the profiles can be related to differences in the charged amino acids local to specific haem groups. First estimates of reorganization free energies λ yield a range consistent with expectations for partially solvent-exposed cofactors, and reveal an activation energy range surmountable for electron flow. Future work will aim at increasing the accuracy of λ with polarizable forcefield dynamics and quantum chemical energy gap calculations, as well as quantum chemical computation of electronic coupling matrix elements.