Correspondence - The use of Nearly Neat16O18O in Spectroscopic Studies of Oxyhemerythrin and Oxyhemoglobin

Klotz and Kurtz mention the use of nearly neat /sup 16/O/sup 18/O in a resonance Raman spectroscopic study of the bonding of O/sub 2/ in oxyhemerythyrin, citing unpublished work in a dissertation in their work on hemerythrin. A prior study of the O/sub 2/ bonding in oxyhemoglobin was carried out with the same /sup 1/andO/sup 18/O sample, and led to a similar conclusion, i.e., that the O/sub 2/ was bonded in such a way that the two oxygen atoms were not equivalent. To the best of the authors knowledge, this work constituted the first preparation of neat /sup 16/O/sup 18/O and its first use in spectroscopy. The work represents a collaboration between the group at Northwestern and a group at Argonne National Laboratory, where the /sup 16/O/sup 18/O was prepared by a rather laborious procedure that entailed the intermediate synthesis of /sup 18/O-enriched hypofluorous acid. A more convenient synthesis of nearly neat /sup 16/O/sup 18/O that makes use of the recently isolated fluoroxysulfate ion, SO/sub 4/F/sup -/ was subsequently developed, and it is anticipated that this uniquely labeled oxygen molecule will now find application in a variety of spectroscopic measurements.