This radical initiator abstracts a hydrogen from an alkane substrate, leading to an alkyl radical intermediate which subsequently recombines with the activated oxygen to form an alcohol and reduced he...This radical initiator abstracts a hydrogen from an alkane substrate, leading to an alkyl radical intermediate which subsequently recombines with the activated oxygen to form an alcohol and reduced heme (the roman numerals in the figure above refer to the oxidation state of the heme iron – in this process, it gains a single electron and thus is converted from the +4 to the +3 oxidation state).
