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Liquid-microjet photoelectron spectroscopy of the green fluorescent protein chromophore

Tau, Omri; Henley, Alice; Boichenko, Anton N; Kleshchina, Nadezhda N; Riley, River; Wang, Bingxing; Winning, Danielle; ... Fielding, Helen H; + view all (2022) Liquid-microjet photoelectron spectroscopy of the green fluorescent protein chromophore. Nature Communications , 13 (1) , Article 507. 10.1038/s41467-022-28155-5. Green open access

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Abstract

Green fluorescent protein (GFP), the most widely used fluorescent protein for in vivo monitoring of biological processes, is known to undergo photooxidation reactions. However, the most fundamental property underpinning photooxidation, the electron detachment energy, has only been measured for the deprotonated GFP chromophore in the gas phase. Here, we use multiphoton ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy in a liquid-microjet and high-level quantum chemistry calculations to determine the electron detachment energy of the GFP chromophore in aqueous solution. The aqueous environment is found to raise the detachment energy by around 4 eV compared to the gas phase, similar to calculations of the chromophore in its native protein environment. In most cases, electron detachment is found to occur resonantly through electronically excited states of the chromophore, highlighting their importance in photo-induced electron transfer processes in the condensed phase. Our results suggest that the photooxidation properties of the GFP chromophore in an aqueous environment will be similar to those in the protein.

Type: Article
Title: Liquid-microjet photoelectron spectroscopy of the green fluorescent protein chromophore
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-28155-5
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28155-5
Language: English
Additional information: Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Keywords: Excited states, Photobiology
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > Dept of Biochemical Engineering
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Chemistry
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10142851
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