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The nitrophorins are NO-carrying heme proteins that are found in the saliva of two species of blood-sucking insects, the kissing bug ( Rhodnius prolixus ) and the bedbug ( Cimex lectularius ). In both insects the NO is bound to the ferric form of the protein, which gives rise to K d s in the micromolar to nanomolar range, and thus upon injection of the saliva into the tissues of the victim the NO can dissociate to cause vasodilation and inhibition of platelet aggregation. The structures of the proteins from each of these insects are unique, and each has a large component of β-sheet structure, which is unusual for heme proteins. While the Rhodnius nitrophorins increase the effectiveness of their NO–heme proteins by also binding histamine, secreted by the victim in response to the bite, to the heme, the Cimex nitrophorin does not bind histamine but rather binds two molecules of NO reversibly, one to the heme and the other to the cysteine thiolate which serves as the heme ligand in the absence of NO. This requires homolytic cleavage of the Fe–S–Cys bond, which produces an EPR-active Fe(II)–NO complex having the {FeNO} 7 electron configuration. For the Rhodnius nitrophorins, the heme of the {FeNO} 6 stable NO complex could have the limiting electron configurations Fe(III)–NO or Fe(II)–NO + . While vibrational spectroscopy suggests the latter and Mossbauer spectroscopy cannot differentiate between a purely diamagnetic Fe(II) center and a strongly antiferromagnetically coupled Fe(III)–NO center, the strong ruffling of the heme (with alternate meso -carbons shifted significantly above and below the mean plane of the porphyrin, and concomitant shifts of the β-pyrrole carbons above and below the mean plane of the porphyrin ring, to produce a very nonplanar porphyrin macrocycle) may suggest at least an important contribution of the latter. The strong ruffling would help to stabilize the (d xz , d yz ) 4 (d xy ) 1 electron configuration of low-spin Fe(III) (but not low-spin Fe(II)), and the d xy orbital does not have correct symmetry for overlap with the half-filled π* orbital of NO. This Fe(III)–NO electron configuration would facilitate reversible dissociation of NO. |
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