Two-Dimensional Pulsed EPR Spectroscopy of the Copper Protein Azurin

Two-dimensional (2D) pulsed EPR spectroscopy was applied to study the copper ligands in azurins from Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Az(pae), and Alcaligenes species NC1IB 11015, Az(asp), in frozen solutions. While a high-resolution three-dimensional crystal structure is available for Az(pae), only a low-resolution structure has been reported for Az(asp). Az(pae) was studied in the pH range 3.9−7.0 and Az(asp) at a pH of 4.8. Measurements were performed at 9 GHz which is usually within the cancellation condition for the remote nitrogen of imidazole ligands. The main technique was the hyperfine sublevel correlation (HYSCORE) technique. At all pH values investigated the 2D HYSCORE spectra of Az(pae) showed correlations between the nuclear frequencies corresponding to the nuclear quadrupole resonance (NQR) frequencies of the remote nitrogens of the imidazole ligands and the double quantum frequency. The spectra showed additional well-resolved cross peaks which indicate correlations between the NQR frequencies of a w...