Adiabaticity of the proton-coupled electron-transfer step in the reduction of superoxide effected by nickel-containing superoxide dismutase metallopeptide-based mimics.

Nickel-containing superoxide dismutases (NiSODs) are bacterial metalloenzymes that catalyze the disproportionation of O2(-). These enzymes take advantage of a redox-active nickel cofactor, which cycles between the Ni(II) and Ni(III) oxidation states, to catalytically disprotorptionate O2(-). The Ni(II) center is ligated in a square planar N2S2 coordination environment, which, upon oxidation to Ni(III), becomes five-coordinate following the ligation of an axial imidazole ligand. Previous studies have suggested that metallopeptide-based mimics of NiSOD reduce O2(-) through a proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) reaction with the electron derived from a reduced Ni(II) center and the proton from a protonated, coordinated Ni(II)-S(H(+))-Cys moiety. The current work focuses on the O2(-) reduction half-reaction of the catalytic cycle. In this study we calculate the vibronic coupling between the reactant and product diabatic surfaces using a semiclassical formalism to determine if the PCET reaction is proceeding through an adiabatic or nonadiabatic proton tunneling process. These results were then used to calculate H/D kinetic isotope effects for the PCET process. We find that as the axial imidazole ligand becomes more strongly associated with the Ni(II) center during the PCET reaction, the reaction becomes more nonadiabatic. This is reflected in the calculated H/D KIEs, which moderately increase as the reaction becomes more nonadiabatic. Furthermore, the results suggest that as the axial ligand becomes less Lewis basic the observed reaction rate constants for O2(-) reduction should become faster because the reaction becomes more adiabatic. These conclusions are in-line with experimental observations. The results thus indicate that variations in the axial donor's ability to coordinate to the nickel center of NiSOD metallopeptide-based mimics will strongly influence the fundamental nature of the O2(-) reduction process.