Tetranuclear and dinuclear phenoxido bridged copper complexes based on unsymmetrical thiosemicarbazone ligands.

We report on the synthesis of new dinucleating phenol-based "end-off" compartmental ligands HLMeH and HLMe2 bearing two different binding sites, one bis(2-methylpyridyl)aminomethyl (BPA) and one thiosemicarbazone (TSC) site, and their corresponding copper(ii) complexes 1t and 2d. With the ligand HLMeH, a tetranuclear entity (1t) has been isolated in the solid state, whereas with HLMe2, which differs from HLMeH by a methyl substituent on the N-terminal amino group of the TSC arm, a dinuclear form (2d) is obtained. X-ray crystallography analysis shows that the nuclearity di vs. tetra is modulated by interactions between copper atoms and hydroxido bridges along with the sulphur atoms of TSC arms. From a magnetic point of view, 1t can be considered as an association of two dinuclear forms leading for both complexes to overall antiferromagnetic coupling. Analysis in acetonitrile solution of structure-property relationships has been carried out by comparing their UV/Vis, electrochemistry, ESI-MS, and NMR (variable temperature and DOSY = diffusion ordered spectroscopy) properties with trends from computational calculations (DFT). HRMAS-DOSY (High Resolution Magic Angle Spinning) NMR spectroscopy has been performed to evaluate the presence of different species in solution at room temperature.

Comparative theoretical studies of the phosphomonoester hydrolysis mechanism by purple acid phosphatases.

We present here the first ONIOM (our own n-layered integrated molecular orbital + molecular mechanics method) studies of a purple acid phosphatase enzyme. Our study focused on the structures of the red kidney bean PAP (kbPAP) complexed with phosphate and with phenyl phosphate and on the mechanism of the phenyl phosphate hydrolysis by the enzyme. Density functional theory (DFT) calculations were also performed using models of different sizes for comparison purpose. Results show that the inclusion of three histidine residues, His202, His295, and His296, with their protein surrounding, is crucial to properly describe the coordination of the substrates. They induce a conformation with the substrate closer to the nucleophilic mu-hydroxyde bridge. In the mechanistic study, a transition state is stabilized by a strong hydrogen bond between His202 and the leaving group of the substrate. Consequently, a smaller value for the activation energy barrier is obtained from DFT calculations including this histidine to the same calculations without this histidine. Using the ONIOM method, this activation energy barrier is even more reduced. So the mechanism, which considers the hydroxo group bridging the two metal ions as nucleophile, becomes really convincing, contrary to the results obtained with a small model at the DFT level.