The mystery of highly reactive oxygen has finally been solved
Highly reactive oxygen can form in mitochondria in our cells
Kateryna Kon / SPL / Alamy
After several decades, researchers finally have an understanding when a type of strange and destructive oxygen occurs in chemical reactions in living cells and certain batteries.
Not all oxygen molecules are created equal. In some, their two most energetic electrons have opposite values of quantum spin while in others, their towers correspond. When they correspond, the molecule is known as “singlet oxygen”, which is very reactive so that it can cause toxic changes in proteins and fats in cells and eat parts of certain batteries. Since the 1960s, chemists have been working to determine when exactly this evil twin of oxygen that we breathe with pleasure especially in chemical reactions. Stefan Freunberger at the Institute of Sciences and Technology Austria and his colleagues have now understood it.
They carried out a series of experiences that started with a superoxide molecule – a compound that contains oxygen and participates in chemical reactions used by mitochondria to supply cells – and ended with oxygen production under one or the other form. While cells have enzymes that help this process, the team has tried different “mediator” molecules. This allowed them to record oxygen manufacturing reactions with a wide range of driving forces or energy differences that require the reaction to occur in the first place. They discovered that it is exactly this driving force that counts – so that the singular oxygen is formed, this force had to become very high.
“There was really a fierce debate on whether or not it is [singlet oxygen] forms in the environment of cells. So far, it has never been clarified, ”explains Freunberger.
Since mitochondria have high pH values that maintain low motor strength, new works imply that singlet oxygen is not produced in large quantities within these cellular powers, which protects the cell from damage.
Kristopher McNeill in Eth Zürich in Switzerland says that the question of the singular production of oxygen has consequences beyond biology. “Wherever it is generated, it can damage or react with things that are in the neighborhood,” he said. The analysis of the new study concerns certain types of batteries and could be part of an explanation to explain why they sometimes corrude from the inside, explains McNeill.
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