Apo-glucose oxidase has been reconstituted with flavins modified in the 7 and 8 positions andcharacterized with regard to the catalytic rate of O
2 reduction and oxygen-18 isotope effects on this process.Kinetic studies as a function of driving force indicate a reorganization energy for electron transfer to O
2 of
= 28 kcal mol
-1 at optimal pH, which is similar to the value obtained earlier from temperature dependenciesof rates (Roth, J. P.; Klinman, J. P.
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.
U.S.A. 2003,
100, 62-67). For the various enzyme-bound flavins, competitive oxygen-18 kinetic isotope effects fall within the narrow range of 1.0266(5) to1.0279(6), apparently because of the dominant contribution of outer-sphere reorganization to the activationbarrier; within the context of semiclassical and quantum mechanical electron transfer theories, the magnitudeof the isotope effects reveals the importance of nuclear tunneling.