Imidazolate‐Stabilized Cu(III): Dioxygen to Oxides at Type 3 Copper Sites
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Imidazole ligation of metals through histidine is extensive among metalloproteins, yet the role of the imidazol ate conjugate base is often neglected, despite its potential accessibility when bonded to an oxidized metal center. Using synthetic models of oxygenated tyrosinase enzymes ligated exclusively by monodentate imidazoles, we find that deprotonation of the μ 2 ‐η 2 :η 2 ‐peroxidodicopper(II) species triggers redox isomerization to an imidazol ate ‐ligated bis(μ 2 ‐oxido)dicopper(III) species. Formal two‐electron oxidation to Cu(III) remains biologically unprecedented, yet is effected readily by addition of base. Spectrophotometric titrations by UV/Visible/near‐IR and copper K‐edge X‐ray absorption spectroscopies are interpreted most simply as two cooperative, 2H + transformations in which the peroxide O−O is cleaved in the first step. Elaboration from simple imidazoles to a protected histidine extends this isomerization into an amino acid environment. The role of phenolate as a base suggests this four‐electron reduction of O 2 is energetically viable in a biological context and requires only two copper centers, which act as two‐electron shuttles when imidazole deprotonation assists. This existential precedent of viable imidazol ate intermediates invites speculation into an alternative mechanism for phenol hydroxylation not previously considered at Type 3 copper sites such as tyrosinases. Structural biological evidence suggests imidazolate ligation of copper may be more widespread than generally understood.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.019 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".