The interaction of “ose bengal with apo‐hemoproteins was found to give rise to a large absorption change near 550 nm. This was used to study the binding of the dye to apo‐cytochrome c peroxidase, apo‐myoglobin, apo‐horseradish peroxidase and apo‐hemoglobin. In all cases there was about one tight and a number of weak binding sites per heme‐binding site, and the binding was impaired in the presence of stoichiometric quantities of heme.
Rose bengal was found to be an effective photo‐oxidation sensitizer for apo‐cytochrome c peroxidase. Kinetic evidence was obtained consistent with the possibility that binding of the dye to the protein is an important step in the photo‐oxidation process. Heme was found to protect the enzyme from loss of enzymic activity caused by photo‐oxidation. Photo‐oxidation does not simply destroy the binding of heme to apo‐cytochrome c peroxidase, but produces changes in the spectrum of the bound heme. There is a loss of ability of recombined enzyme to form an enzyme substrate complex in the presence of stoichiometric quantities of hydrogen peroxide, which apparently causes the overall loss of enzymic activity. Photo‐oxidation was accompanied by loss of one tryptophan and two histidine residues per mole of protein, but apparently only one of the latter is essential to the enzymic activity.
It was concluded that rose bengal can act as a specific modifying agent for the heme site in apo‐hemo‐proteins, and that this specificity arises from specificity of binding to the heme site. It is suggested that specificity of binding may provide a general basis for the observation of specific destruction of functionally interesting residues in photo‐oxidation.