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Wide-dynamic-range kinetic investigations of deep proton tunnelling in proteins

Nature Chemistry volume 8, pages 874–880 (2016)Cite this article

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Abstract

Directional proton transport along ‘wires’ that feed biochemical reactions in proteins is poorly understood. Amino-acid residues with high pKa are seldom considered as active transport elements in such wires because of their large classical barrier for proton dissociation. Here, we use the light-triggered proton wire of the green fluorescent protein to study its ground-electronic-state proton-transport kinetics, revealing a large temperature-dependent kinetic isotope effect. We show that ‘deep’ proton tunnelling between hydrogen-bonded oxygen atoms with a typical donor–acceptor distance of 2.7–2.8 Å fully accounts for the rates at all temperatures, including the unexpectedly large value (2.5 × 109 s−1) found at room temperature. The rate-limiting step in green fluorescent protein is assigned to tunnelling of the ionization-resistant serine hydroxyl proton. This suggests how high-pKa residues within a proton wire can act as a ‘tunnel diode’ to kinetically trap protons and control the direction of proton flow.

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Figure 1: Deep tunnelling at the environmental transition state.
Figure 2: The photocycle and chemical structure of GFP.
Figure 3: Transient absorption measurements as a function of temperature for GFP.
Figure 4: Arrhenius plot of the ground-state (I → A) proton transfer rates in GFP.
Figure 5: Hypothetical proton wire composed of water molecules and uncharged amino acid residues with high local pKa.

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  • 09 June 2016

    In the original version of this Article the caption for Fig. 5a contained incorrect information. k ℓ d was in fact shown by a black arrow. All versions of the Article have been corrected.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Science Foundation awards CHE-1243948 (P.M.C) and CHE-1026369 (P.M.C. and J.T.S.) and EPSRC award EP/I003304/1 (J.v.T.). The authors thank M. Bearpark and L. Thompson for providing the ONIOM files associated with the GFP normal mode calculation and A. Fitzpatrick for preparing the E222D mutant. A. McClelland and B. Kellner are also thanked for early contributions to this work.

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  1. Bridget Salna and Abdelkrim Benabbas: These authors contributed equally to this work

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics and Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Complex Systems, Northeastern University, Boston, 02115, Massachusetts, USA

    Bridget Salna, Abdelkrim Benabbas, J. Timothy Sage & Paul M. Champion

  2. Division of Molecular Biosciences, South Kensington campus, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK.

    Jasper van Thor

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Contributions

A.B. and B.S. carried out the experiments, performed the data analysis, and helped to develop the theoretical models. In doing so, they contributed equally to this work. P.M.C., J.v.T. and J.T.S. conceived the experiments and developed the theoretical approaches. P.M.C. wrote the paper with input from the other authors.

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Correspondence to Paul M. Champion.

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Salna, B., Benabbas, A., Sage, J. et al. Wide-dynamic-range kinetic investigations of deep proton tunnelling in proteins. Nature Chem 8, 874–880 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nchem.2527

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