Calculation of all-electron wavefunction of hemoprotein cytochrome c by density functional theory

An all-electron wavefunction of horse heart dh-low-spin ferrocytochrome c (ferrocyt. c) was calculated by our Gaussian-based density functional theory (DFT) molecular orbital (MO) program, ProteinDF with a workstation cluster. It may be the first full-scale DFT calculation of a metalloprotein, and the numbers of orbitals and auxiliary functions are 9600 and 17 578, respectively. We show that the highest occupied MO (HOMO) derives from 3d orbitals of heme Fe and is unexpectedly delocalized while preserving the essential atomic character, which will give room for consideration of the electron transfer processes between proteins. The potential of MO calculations on larger proteins is also discussed with the computational data of cytochrome c (cyt. c). (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.