Spectroscopic and Photophysical Investigation of Model Dipyrroles Common to Bilins: Exploring Natural Design for Steering Torsion to Divergent Functions.

ABSTRACT: Biliproteins are a unique class of photosynthetic proteins in their diverse, and at times, divergent biophysical function. The two contexts of photosynthetic light harvesting and photoreception demonstrate characteristically opposite criteria for success, with light harvesting demanding structurally-rigid chromophores which minimize excitation quenching, and photoreception requiring structural flexibility to enable conformational isomerization. The functional plasticity borne out in these two biological contexts is a consequence of the structural plasticity of the pigments utilized by biliproteins-linear tetrapyrroles, or bilins. In this work, the intrinsic flexibility of the bilin framework is investigated in a bottom-up fashion by reducing the active nuclear degrees of freedom through mo

SUBMITTER: Staheli CF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7925881 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature