Electrochromic shift calculations reveal spectral tuning in animal rhodopsins

Description

Rhodopsins are biological pigment-protein complexes found in photoreceptor cells of the retina. Within the framework of a two-step quantum chemical/electrostatic calculation scheme [1] that has recently been successfully applied to reveal the functional states of BLUF photoreceptors [2], we estimated absorption shifts of the retinal chromophore for a series of site-directed mutants. We eventually explain the variations of the maximal absorbance in the red- and green-sensitive visual pigments. Our results are in excellent agreement with recent experimental studies [3] and suggest that the maximum spectral sensitivity in animal rhodopsins is dominated by electrostatic tuning. [1] T. Renger et al., Photosynth. Res. 116, 367 (2013). [2] F. Collette et al., J. Phys. Chem. B 118, 11109 (2014). [3] W. Wang et al., Science 338, 1340 (2012).

Period	08 Mar 2016
Event title	80. Jahrestagung der DPG und DPG-Frühjahrstagung
Event type	Conference
Location	GermanyShow on map