A possible role of histidine residues in long-range electron transfer in proteins

Metal-histidine complexes are recurrent structural motifs in proteins exhibiting long-range electron transfer (ET), being involved both as electron donor or acceptor groups and as bridges which mediate ET between other cofactors. That observation suggests that the histidine residue could play an active role in ET, beyond that of simply binding the metal ion. Density functional theory and ab initio computations, performed on a simplified model system of the ET chain in semisynthetic Zinc cytochromes, confirm that expectation, suggesting that the nitrogen site of the histidine ring can exchange both a proton and a whole hydrogen atom with its redox partners. This finoling indicates that proton-assisted ET appears to be a plausible mechanism in this system.