Dinuclear Copper Complexes with Imidazole Derivative Ligands: A Theoretical Study Related to Catechol Oxidase Activity

Catechol oxidase is a very important and interesting metalloprotein. In spite of the efforts to understand the reaction mechanism of this protein, there are important questions that remain unanswered concerning the catalytic mechanism of this enzyme. In this article, dinuclear copper compounds are used as biomimetic models of catechol oxidase to study plausible reaction paths. These dinuclear copper(II) complexes have distant metal centers (of 7.5 angstrom approximately) and superior catalytic activity to that of many dicopper complexes with shorter Cu-Cu distances. One mononuclear copper(II) complex is also analyzed in this investigation in order to see the influence of the two metal centers in the catalytic activity. Density functional theory calculations were performed to obtain optimized structures, vertical ionization energies, vertical electron affinities, the electrodonating power (omega(-)), the electroaccepting power (omega(+)) and the energy difference of several reaction paths. The K-M experimental results that were previously reported compare well with the electroaccepting power (omega(+)) of the copper compounds that are included in this article, indicating that this index is useful for the interpretation of the electron transfer capacity and therefore the catalytic activity. The catechol moiety coordinates to only one Cu ion, but two metal atoms are needed in order to have a good electron acceptor capacity of the biomimetic models.