Samantekt:
The aerobic respiratory chain of the thermohalophilic bacterium Rhodothermus marinus, a nonphotosynthetic organism from the Bacteroidetes/Chlorobi group, contains a high-potential iron–sulfur protein (HiPIP) that transfers electrons from a bc1 analog complex to a caa3 oxygen reductase. Here, we describe the crystal structure of the reduced form of R. marinus HiPIP, solved by the single-wavelength anomalous diffraction method, based on the anomalous scattering of the iron atoms from the [4Fe–4S]3+/2+ cluster and refined to 1.0 Å resolution. This is the first structure of a HiPIP isolated from a nonphotosynthetic bacterium involved in an aerobic respiratory chain. The structure shows a similar environment around the cluster as the other HiPIPs from phototrophic bacteria, but reveals several features distinct from those of the other HiPIPs of phototrophic bacteria, such as a different fold of the N-terminal region of the polypeptide due to a disulfide bridge and a ten-residue-long insertion.