DFT calculations of isomer shifts and quadrupole splitting parameters in synthetic iron-oxo complexes: Applications to methane monooxygenase and ribonucleotide reductase

To predict isomer shifts and quadrupole splitting parameters of Fe atoms in the protein active sites of methane monooxygenase and ribonucleoticle reductase, a correlation between experimental isomer shifts ranging 0.1-1.5 mm s(-1) for Fe atoms in a training set with the corresponding density functional theory (DFT) calculated electron densities at the Fe nuclei in those complexes is established. The geometries of the species in the training set, consisting of synthetic polar monomeric and dimeric iron complexes, are taken from the Cambridge structural database. A comparison of calculated Mossbauer parameters for Fe atoms from complexes in the training set with their corresponding experimental values shows very good agreement (standard deviation of 0.11 mm/s, correlation coefficient of -0.94). However, for the Fe atoms in the active sites of the structurally characterized proteins of methane monooxygenase and ribonucleoticle reductase, the calculated Mossbauer parameters deviate more from their experimentally measured values. The high correlation that exists between calculated and observed quadrupole splitting and isomer shift parameters for the synthetic complexes leads us to conclude that the main source of the error arising for the protein active sites is due to the differing degrees of atomic-level resolution for the protein structural data, compared to the synthetic complexes in the training set. Much lower X-ray resolutions associated with the former introduce uncertainty in the accuracy of several bond lengths. This is ultimately reflected in the calculated isomer shifts and quadrupole splitting parameters of the Fe sites in the proteins. For the proteins, the closest correspondence between predicted and observed Mossbauer isomer shifts follows the order MMOHred, RNRred, MMOHox, and RNRox, with average deviations from experiment of 0.17, 0.17, 0.17-0.20, and 0.32 mm/s, but this requires DFT geometry optimization of the iron-oxo dimer complexes.