Controlling Dicopper Protein Functions

Maturation processes of dinuclear copper proteins such as tyrosinase, catechol oxidase, and hemocyanin have been a long-standing mystery in copper protein chemistry. Until now, several crystal structures have revealed that these copper proteins share a similar dinuclear copper active site, where each copper ion is ligated by three histidine imidazoles, and binds molecular oxygen in a side-on fashion to form a (µ-η2:η2-peroxido)dicopper(II) species not only as the dioxygen-adduct in oxy-hemocyanins but also as the key reactive intermediate for the hydroxylation of phenols to catechols (phenolase reaction) and the oxidation of catechols to o-quinones (catecholase reaction) in tyrosinases and catechol oxidases. Recently, we have succeeded in determining the high-resolution crystal structures of the recombinant pro-form of yellow koji mold tyrosinase to find the existence of a distinct C-terminal domain containing a –CXXC– unit, that is the common sequence motif of the copper chaperons. Thus, the C-terminal d...