Vibrational Spectra of a Mechanosensitive Channel

We report the simulated vibrational spectra of a mechanosensitive membrane channel in different gating states. Our results show that while linear absorption is insensitive to structural differences, linear dichroism and sum-frequency generation spectroscopies are sensitive to the orientation of the transmembrane helices, which is changing during the opening process. Linear dichroism cannot distinguish an intermediate structure from the closed structure, but sum-frequency generation can. In addition, we find that two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy can be used to distinguish all three investigated gating states of the mechanosensitive membrane channel.

Two-Dimensional Infrared Spectroscopy of Antiparallel β-Sheet Secondary Structure

We investigate the sensitivity of femtosecond Fourier transform two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy to protein secondary structure with a study of antiparallel β-sheets. The results show that 2D IR spectroscopy is more sensitive to structural differences between proteins than traditional infrared spectroscopy, providing an observable that allows comparison to quantitative models of protein vibrational spectroscopy. 2D IR correlation spectra of the amide I region of poly-L-lysine, concanavalin A, ribonuclease A, and lysozyme show cross-peaks between the IR-active transitions that are characteristic of amide I couplings for polypeptides in antiparallel hydrogen-bonding registry. For poly-L-lysine, the 2D IR spectrum contains the eight-peak structure expected for two dominant vibrations of an extended, ordered antiparallel β-sheet. In the proteins with antiparallel β-sheets, interference effects between the diagonal and cross-peaks arising from the sheets, combined with diagonally elongated resonances from additional amide transitions, lead to a characteristic “Z”-shaped pattern for the amide I region in the 2D IR spectrum. We discuss in detail how the number of strands in the sheet, the local configurational disorder in the sheet, the delocalization of the vibrational excitation, and the angle between transition dipole moments affect the position, splitting, amplitude, and line shape of the cross-peaks and diagonal peaks.

Two-Dimensional Infrared Spectroscopy of Azido-Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide in Water.

Mid-IR active analogs of enzyme cofactors have the potential to be important spectroscopic reporters of enzyme active site dynamics. Azido-nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), which has been recently synthesized in our laboratory, is a mid-IR active analog of NAD +, a ubiquitous redox cofactor in biology. In this study, we measure the frequency-frequency time correlation function for the antisymmetric stretching vibration of the azido group of azido-NAD+ in water. Our results are consistent with previous studies of pseudohalides in water. We conclude that azido-NAD+ is sensitive to local environmental fluctuations, which, in water, are dominated by hydrogen-bond dynamics of the water molecules around the probe. Our results demonstrate the potential of azido-NAD+ as a vibrational probe and illustrate the potential of substituted NAD+-analogs as reporters of local structural dynamics that could be used for studies of protein dynamics in NAD-dependent enzymes