Elliott Receives NSF Award to Explore Multi-Electron Redox Catalysis
Prof. Sean Elliott and his group have received a 3-year award from the National Science Foundation for their project entitled “Connections Between Redox Chemistry and Catalysis in Multiheme Peroxidases.” While nature excels at the manipulation of redox co-factors to affect dramatic catalytic transformations, we still do not have a molecular understanding of how multi-electron redox catalysis is achieved. In this work, the Elliott Group will examine a complex redox enzyme, a bacterial cytochrome c peroxidase that contains two c-type heme cofactors that are used to reduce hydrogen peroxide to water. Their aim is to provide molecular details of how a model heme-based active site is controlled by redox reactions, proton transfers, and protein dynamics.
Their findings will be the basis for the development of new analytical (electrochemical) methods at the interface of chemistry and biology and the energy sciences, where critical questions remain about how to generate, manipulate or tune reversible, multi-electron redox reactions.