A Structural Basis of Light Energy and Electron Transfer in Biology (Nobel Lecture)

Abstract

Aspects of intramolecular light energy and electron transfer will be discussed for three protein‐‐cofactor complexes, whose three‐dimensional structures have been elucidated by X‐ray crystallography: components of light‐harvesting cyanobacterial phycobilisomes; the purple bacterial reaction centre; and the blue multi‐copper oxidases. A wealth of functional data is available for these systems which allows specific correlations between structure and function and general conclusions about light energy and electron transfer in biological materials to be made.

Trinuclear Triangular Copper(II) Clusters – Synthesis, Electrochemical Studies and Catalytic Peroxidative Oxidation of Cycloalkanes

“…[5] Scheme 1. General procedure for the synthesis of trinuclear copper complexes [Cu 3 (µ 3 -OH)(µ-pz) 3 (RCOO) 2 L x LЈ y ].…”

“…Continuing our studies on these compounds, we have synthesised and characterised four new trinuclear triangular Cu II compounds, [Cu 3 (µ 3 -OH)(µ-pz) 3 [5a] or CH 3 (CH 2 ) 2 (butyrate), [5b] we report the catalytic properties for the peroxidative oxidation of cycloalkanes. Moreover, the electrochemical behaviour of such compounds and of an analogous derivative with R = CH 3 CH 2 (propionate) is presented.…”

“…[3] In past years we have successfully synthesised di-, tri-, tetra-and polynuclear triethanolamine copper(II) complexes, [4] as well as trinuclear triangular copper(II) complexes with carboxylate ligands [5] and shown [4,5c] that they can act as remarkably active and selective catalysts or catalyst precursors for peroxidative oxidation of cycloalkanes to the corresponding alcohols and ketones.…”

Chemistry and light - part 2: light and energy

“…These structure determinations refer to bacterial, rather than green plant, photosynthesis but the basic features are likely very similar in all cases. A simplified view of the structure of the reaction center of Rhodopseudomonas viridis 2,5,6 is sketched in Fig. 2.…”

“…A giant step in the understanding of photoinduced charge separation has been made with the determination by X-ray crystallography of the structure at the molecular level of some reaction centers [2][3][4][5][6] (see the Inset). These structure determinations refer to bacterial, rather than green plant, photosynthesis but the basic features are likely very similar in all cases.…”