Hydrogen Bonding to the Substrate Is Not Required for Rieske Iron-Sulfur Protein Docking to the Quinol Oxidation Site of Complex III

Complex III or the cytochrome (cyt) bc(1) complex constitutes an integral part of the respiratory chain of most aerobic organisms and of the photosynthetic apparatus of anoxygenic purple bacteria. The function of cyt bc(1) is to couple the reaction of electron transfer from ubiquinol to cytochrome c to proton pumping across the membrane. Mechanistically, the electron transfer reaction requires docking of its Rieske iron-sulfur protein (ISP) subunit to the quinol oxidation site (Q(P)) of the complex. Formation of an H-bond between the ISP and the bound substrate was proposed to mediate the docking. Here we show that the binding of oxazolidinedione-type inhibitors famoxadone, jg144, and fenamidone induces docking of the ISP to the QP site in the absence of the H-bond formation both in mitochondrial and bacterial cyt bc(1) complexes, demonstrating that ISP docking is independent of the proposed direct ISP-inhibitor interaction. The binding of oxazolidinedione-type inhibitors to cyt bc(1) of different species reveals a toxophore that appears to interact optimally with residues in the Q(P) site. The effect of modifications or additions to the toxophore on the binding to cyt bc(1) from different species could not be predicted from structure-based sequence alignments, as demonstrated by the altered binding mode of famoxadone to bacterial cyt bc(1).