Cytochrome c oxidase (CytcO) is the final electron acceptor of the respiratory chain. In this chain a current of electrons, derived from degradation of nutrients, along with protons, are used to reduce oxygen to water. The reaction is exergonic and the excess energy is used to pump protons across the membrane. This proton-coupled electron transfer is regulated, for example, by the membrane potential, the composition of the membrane and the ATP/ADP concentrations. 

Here, we have investigated the mechanism of this regulation. Specifically, we investigated ligand binding to CytcO in mitochondria, which provides mechanistic information about CytcO in its native environment. In addition to CytcO, a water soluble protein, flavohemoglobin (yHb) was found to bind CO and we found that it is localized in the intermembrane space (IMS). We also extracted CytcO from mitochondria without detergent using the styrene maleic acid (SMA) co-polymer. We could show that the SMA-extracted CytcO behaved similarly in its reaction with O₂ and CO as CytcO in mitochondria.

In mitochondria and bacterial membranes CytcO transports charges against a transmembrane electrochemical gradient. We induced a membrane potential across sub-mitochondrial particles (SMPs) by addition of ATP and measured single CytcO turnover. Our results indicate that proton transfer, but not electron transfer, across the membrane is affected by the membrane potential.

In yeast CytcO subunit Cox13 has been shown to play a role in ATP/ADP binding to regulate activity. We have solved the structure of Cox13 using NMR and identified the residues that constitute the ATP-binding site, which is located at the C-terminus.

Finally we showed that the main proton-transfer pathways in yeast CytcO function similarly to their bacterial counterparts and that the proposed H-pathway, absent in bacteria, is not responsible for proton translocation in mitochondrial CytcO from S. cerevisiae.