Ligand Influences in Heme–Copper O2-Chemistry as Synthetic Models for Cytochrome c Oxidase

Prominent recent advances in synthetic modeling chemistry of cytochrome c oxidase include the generation and characterization of high-spin heme–peroxo–copper species derived from FeII/CuI/O2 reactions. Comparison of spectroscopic properties of a series of related complexes leads to a finding that the coordination nature of the peroxo bridging group binding between heme and copper can be dramatically altered by copper ligand environment. Intrinsic copper/O2 interactions seem to be applicable to the chemistry of heme/Cu/O2 systems.