ABSTRACT:Ligand coordination effects on the magnetic interaction and the reversible dioxygen binding process for the models of hemocyanin have been investigated with hybrid density functional theory. Hemocyanin is an oxygen transport protein found in mollusks and arthropods. The active site of hemocyanin contains a pair of copper atoms, each of which is coordinated by three histidine residues. We utilized NH 3 (a), methylimidazole (b), and histidine (c) as the ligands of the models of hemocyanin, which coordinate to the binuclear copper core in the active site of oxygenated (1z) (z ϭ a-c) and deoxygenated hemocyanin (2z). The difference of the ligand coordination in the magnetic couplings for the model of hemocyanin 1z complexed with peroxide (1z-O 2 2؊ ) shows that the substitution from histidine to methylimidazole group is not serious, but that the substitution from imidazole to NH 3 is influential. In the dioxygen binding process, the ligands influence the binding energy and the shapes of potential energy surfaces of the models of hemocyanin 1z and 2z with dioxygen due to the strength of the mixing between the ground state and the charge transfer one. The active d xy Ϯ d xy orbitals of the copper core of 1b and 1c strongly interact with * h and * v orbitals of the dioxygen than those of 1a, leading to the larger binding energy of the model 1b (1c) with dioxygen. The orbital energies of the active orbitals for the synthetic model, [Cu(HB(3,5-iPr 2 -Pz) 3 )] 2 (HB(3,5-iPr 2 -Pz) 3 ϭ hydrotris{3,5-diisopropyl-pyrazolyl}borate), imply that it irreversibly binds dioxygen