Differential Control of Heme Reactivity in Alpha and Beta Subunits of Hemoglobin: A Combined Raman Spectroscopic and Computational Study

[Image: see text] The use of hybrid hemoglobin (Hb), with mesoheme substituted for protoheme, allows separate monitoring of the α or β hemes along the allosteric pathway. Using resonance Raman (rR) spectroscopy in silica gel, which greatly slows protein motions, we have observed that the Fe–histidine stretching frequency, νFeHis, which is a monitor of heme reactivity, evolves between frequencies characteristic of the R and T states, for both α or β chains, prior to the quaternary R–T and T–R shifts. Computation of νFeHis, using QM/MM and the conformational search program PELE, produced remarkable agreement with experiment. Analysis of the PELE structures showed that the νFeHis shifts resulted from heme distortion and, in the α chain, Fe–His bond tilting. These results support the tertiary two-state model of ligand binding (Henry et al., Biophys. Chem.2002, 98, 149). Experimentally, the νFeHis evolution is faster for β than for α chains, and pump–probe rR spectroscopy in solution reveals an inflection in the νFeHis time course at 3 μs for β but not for α hemes, an interval previously shown to be the first step in the R–T transition. In the α chain νFeHis dropped sharply at 20 μs, the final step in the R–T transition. The time courses are fully consistent with recent computational mapping of the R–T transition via conjugate peak refinement by Karplus and co-workers (Fischer et al., Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A.2011, 108, 5608). The effector molecule IHP was found to lower νFeHis selectively for α chains within the R state, and a binding site in the α(1)α(2) cleft is suggested.