Mechanistic principles of hydrogen evolution in the membrane-bound hydrogenase

The membrane-bound hydrogenase (Mbh) from Pyrococcus furiosus is an archaeal member of the Complex I superfamily. It catalyzes the reduction of protons to H ₂ gas powered by a [NiFe] active site and transduces the free energy into proton pumping and Na ⁺ /H ⁺ -exchange across the membrane. Despite recent structural advances (1–4), the mechanistic principles of H ₂ catalysis and ion transport in Mbh remain elusive. Here we probe how the redox chemistry drives the proton reduction to H ₂ and how the catalysis couples to conformational dynamics in the membrane domain of Mbh. By combining large-scale quantum chemical density functional theory (DFT) and correlated ab initio wave function methods with atomistic molecular dynamics simulations, we show that the proton transfer reactions required for the catalysis are gated by electric field effects that direct the protons by water-mediated reactions from Glu21 _L towards the [NiFe] site, or alternatively along the nearby His75 _L pathway that also becomes energetically feasible in certain reaction steps. These local proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) reactions induce conformational changes around the active site that provide a key coupling element via conserved loop structures to the ion transport activity. We find that H ₂ forms in a heterolytic proton reduction step, with spin crossovers tuning the energetics along key reaction steps. On a general level, our work showcases the role of electric fields in enzyme catalysis, and how these effects are employed by the [NiFe] active site of Mbh to drive the PCET reactions and ion transport.