Ultrafast Photoinduced Electron Transfer in Green Fluorescent Protein Bearing a Genetically Encoded Electron Acceptor

Xiaoxuan Lv, Yang Yu, Meng Zhou, Cheng Hu, Feng Gao, Jiasong Li, Xiaohong Liu, Kai Deng, Peng Zheng, Weimin Gong, Andong Xia*, Jiangyun Wang

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

26 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Electron transfer (ET) is widely used for driving the processes that underlie the chemistry of life. However, our abilities to probe electron transfer mechanisms in proteins and design redox enzymes are limited, due to the lack of methods to site-specifically insert electron acceptors into proteins in vivo. Here we describe the synthesis and genetic incorporation of 4-fluoro-3-nitrophenylalanine (FNO2Phe), which has similar reduction potentials to NAD(P)H and ferredoxin, the most important biological reductants. Through the genetic incorporation of FNO2Phe into green fluorescent protein (GFP) and femtosecond transient absorption measurement, we show that photoinduced electron transfer (PET) from the GFP chromophore to FNO2Phe occurs very fast (within 11 ps), which is comparable to that of the first electron transfer step in photosystem I, from P700∗ to A0. This genetically encoded, low-reduction potential unnatural amino acid (UAA) can significantly improve our ability to investigate electron transfer mechanisms in complex reductases and facilitate the design of miniature proteins that mimic their functions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)7270-7273
Number of pages4
JournalJournal of the American Chemical Society
Volume137
Issue number23
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 17 Jun 2015
Externally publishedYes

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