Does photodissociation of molecular oxygen from myoglobin and hemoglobin yield singlet oxygen?

Time-resolved luminescence measurements in the near-infrared region indicate that photodissociation of molecular oxygen from myoglobin and hemoglobin does not produce detectable quantities of singlet oxygen. A simple and highly sensitive method of luminescence quantification is developed and used to determine the upper limit for the quantum yield of singlet oxygen production. The proposed method was preliminarily evaluated using model data sets and confirmed with experimental data for aqueous solutions of 5,10,15,20-tetrakis(4-N-methylpyridyl) porphyrin. A general procedure for error estimation is suggested. The method is shown to provide a determination of the integral luminescence intensity in a wide range of values even for kinetics with extremely low signal-to-noise ratio. The present experimental data do not deny the possibility of singlet oxygen generation during the photodissociation of molecular oxygen from myoglobin and hemoglobin. However, the photodissociation is not efficient to yield singlet oxygen escaped from the proteins into the surrounding medium. The upper limits for the quantum yields of singlet oxygen production in the surrounding medium after the photodissociation for oxyhemoglobin and oxymyoglobin do not exceed 3.4 × 10−3 and 2.3 × 10−3, respectively. On the average, no more than one molecule of singlet oxygen from every hundred photodissociated oxygen molecules can succeed in escaping from the protein matrix.