The mechanism for dioxygen formation in PSII studied by quantum chemical methods

The availability of an X-ray structure for PSII including the water-oxidizing cluster, where the metal atoms and the amino acids are assigned, has opened up new possibilities to study the mechanism for dioxygen formation. In the present paper the main results of an ongoing hybrid DFT study are presented. The model used follows the structure suggested by the X-ray analysis as closely as possible. After nearly one thousand optimizations of different structures, each one with about 70 atoms, the main features of a water oxidizing mechanism start to emerge. The key intermediate is an oxyl radical state in S(3), stabilized by a weak trans effect to a bridging oxo in the cube. To reach this radical state a structural rearrangement appears necessary, in which one additional bridging oxo is formed between the dangling manganese and a manganese in the cube. The calculated energetics is reasonable but still not fully consistent with a correct mechanism. It is suggested that some part of the structure is not correct, probably the presence of the bicarbonate.