Thiol-disulfide exchange reactions between thiol-disulfide oxidoreductases (e.g. thioredoxin or Trx) and client proteins can obtain a rate several orders faster than those between chemical reagents (e.g. dithiothreitol) and client proteins. The active sites of these oxidoreductases are characterized by a CXXC motif. The XX dipeptide of Trx is GP. By altering the C-terminal X to A, K and D, it is shown that the P → K mutation confers the largest effect on the redox potential, which it elevated by 28 mV, while the P → D mutation displays the smallest variation. The change in pK_a of the nucleophilic thiol also follows this trend. However, GK and GA react faster with thioredoxin reductase, exhibiting a rate rank of GK > GA > GP > GD, while the rates toward insulin and PDI follow the order GP > GA > GK > GD. The rate change spans two to three orders of magnitude. This work demonstrates that redox reactivity does not correlate simply with pK_a and redox potential, but instead supports the important role of interaction between proteins in determining the fast reactivity and rate order of Trx. A reaction mechanism involving the transient formation of a Trx–protein binding complex is proposed for the oxidoreduction of protein thiols-disulfides. Furthermore, studies on insulin reduction show that Trx acts as an enzyme rather than a redox couple. These results provide explanations for the observed variations of the CXXC motif in PDI-like proteins as well as the conservation of the CXXC motif in Trx.