화학공학소재연구정보센터
Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.138, No.12, 3942-3945, 2016
Role of Coherent Low-Frequency Motion in Excited-State Proton Transfer of Green Fluorescent Protein Studied by Time-Resolved Impulsive Stimulated Raman Spectroscopy
Green fluorescent protein (GFP) from jellyfish Aequorea victoria, an essential bioimaging tool, luminesces via excited-state proton transfer (ESPT) in which the phenolic proton of the p-hydroxybenzylideneimidazolinone chromophore is transferred to G1u222 through a hydrogen-bond network. In this process, the ESPT mediated by the low-frequency motion of the chromophore has been proposed. We address this issue using femtosecond time-resolved impulsive stimulated Raman spectroscopy. After coherently exciting low frequency modes (<300 cm(-1)) in the excited state of GFP, we examined the excited-state structural evolution and the ESPT dynamics within the dephasing time of the low-frequency vibration. A clear anharmonic vibrational coupling is found between one high-frequency mode of the chromophore (phenolic CH bend) and a low frequency mode at similar to 104 cm(-1). However, the data show that this low-frequency motion does not substantially affect the ESPT dynamics.