(American Chemical Society (ACS), 2015) Koo, Bon Jun; Huynh, Michael; Halbach, Robert Leonard; Stubbe, JoAnne; Nocera, Daniel
The presentation of two phenols on a xanthene backbone is akin to the tyrosine dyad (Y730 and Y731) of ribonucleotide reductase. X-ray crystallography reveals that the two phenol moieties are cofacially disposed at 4.35 Å. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) reveals that phenol oxidation is modulated within the dyad, which exhibits a splitting of one-electron waves with the second oxidation of the phenol dyad occurring at larger positive potential than that of a typical phenol. In contrast, a single phenol appended to a xanthene exhibits a two-electron (ECE) process, consistent with reported oxidation pathways of phenols in acetonitrile. The perturbation of the phenol potential by stacking is reminiscent of a similar effect for guanines stacked within DNA base pairs.
