Reply to “Comment on ‘How a Formate Dehydrogenase Responds to Oxygen: Unexpected O2 Insensitivity of an Enzyme Harboring Tungstopterin, Selenocysteine, and [4Fe-4S] Clusters’”

Abstract

Buckel has commented that we did not demonstrate electron bifurcation (EB) in our recent publication [Graham et al. ACS Catal. 2022, 12, 10449-10471]. As the person who conceived, wrote, and served as the corresponding author of the latter, I am taking charge of providing this response. I have (i) favored Wolfgang Nitschke’s broad definition of EB; (ii) recognized that all bifurcating systems do not behave alike; and (iii) properly developed and interpreted our proposed EB model in the context of literature findings. Regardless, our data and results have been successfully reproduced by other laboratories in the United States, Europe, and Australia.