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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2015 Aug 19.
Published in final edited form as: Nature. 2015 Jan 21;518(7539):431–434. doi: 10.1038/nature14160

Figure 3. Formation of compound Q and its reaction with methane.

Figure 3

Homolytic mechanism of O-O bond cleavage (ii) upon formation of Q from P (i) follows from the structure of Q (iii) presented here. Alternative structures of Q (iv, v) discounted by current results are also shown. The iron shown on the left in the Q structure (iii) may retain the solvent found in P. In this case, E243 would not bind to this iron, but would be likely to hydrogen bond with the bound solvent4,5. T (vi) contains a single atom from O2 while another is incorporated in the product.