Color tuning of visual rhodopsins: a quantitative explanation by electrostatic calculations

Description

Rhodopsins are biological pigment-protein complexes found in photoreceptor cells of the retina. Comparing the results of two quantum chemical/electrostatic calculation methods, that have been applied successfully to reveal the functional states of BLUF photoreceptors [1] and photosystem II antenna protein CP29 [2], we have estimated absorption shifts of the retinal chromophore for a series of site-directed mutants. Our results are in excellent agreement with recent experimental studies [3] and strongly suggest that the spectral sensitivity in animal rhodopsins is dominated by electrostatic tuning. [1] F. Collette et al., J. Phys. Chem. B 118, 11109 (2014). [2] F. Müh et al., Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 16, 11848 (2014). [3] W. Wang et al., Science 338, 1340 (2012).

Period	23 Mar 2017
Event title	81. Jahrestagung der DPG und DPG-Frühjahrstagung
Event type	Conference
Location	GermanyShow on map