Population Dynamics of Stretching Excitations of p-Azido-phenylalanine Incorporated in Calmodulin-Peptide Complexes

J Phys Chem B. 2022 Jan 20;126(2):368-375. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpcb.1c06775. Epub 2022 Jan 6.

Abstract

We genetically incorporated the unnatural amino acid p-azido-phenylalanine (AzF) into the ubiquitous Ca2+ sensor protein calmodulin (CaM) in complex with different peptides to explore the response of the azido stretching line shape to varying binding motifs with femtosecond infrared spectroscopy. The dynamic response of the azido stretching mode varies in different CaM-peptide complexes. We model these dynamics as coherent excitations of Fermi resonances and extract a lifetime of the azido stretching vibration of about 1 ps. The resulting model parameters are commensurate with the linear infrared absorption lineshapes which suggests that the conformation-sensitive vibrational lineshape could be composed of Fermi resonances that differ between the protein-peptide complexes.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Calmodulin* / chemistry
  • Molecular Conformation
  • Phenylalanine* / chemistry
  • Population Dynamics
  • Spectrophotometry, Infrared

Substances

  • Calmodulin
  • Phenylalanine