K. Burda et al., An estimation of the size of the water cluster present at the cleavage site of the water splitting enzyme, FEBS LETTER, 491(1-2), 2001, pp. 81-84
In time-dependent measurements of oxygen evolution in tobacco thylakoid mem
branes ne varied the fraction of (H2O)-O-18 and the temperature and measure
d water splitting as O-18(2), (OO)-O-16-O-18, and O-16(2) by mass spectrome
try, We show that the approach to the equilibrium of the system after (H2O)
-O-18 addition can be very well understood in terms of the diffusion of wat
er molecules. The equilibrium states of O-16(2), (OO)-O-16-O-18, and O-18(2
) evolution differ from the theoretical binomial distributions, which are e
xpected under the prerequisite of ideal mixing of the water molecules and t
hat of the chemical equivalence of (H2O)-O-18 and (H2O)-O-16 for an infinit
e cluster. The presence of tills deviation means that there is a typical si
ze of water clusters having access to cleavage by the water splitting enzym
e. We estimated that this cluster contains about 12+/-2 water molecules, (C
) 2001 Federation of European Biochemical Societies, Published by Elsevier
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