Optical measurements of long-range protein vibrations

Gheorghe Acbas, Katherine A. Niessen, Edward H. Snell and A.G. Markelz ()
Additional contact information
Gheorghe Acbas: University at Buffalo, SUNY
Katherine A. Niessen: University at Buffalo, SUNY
Edward H. Snell: Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, University at Buffalo, SUNY
A.G. Markelz: University at Buffalo, SUNY

Nature Communications, 2014, vol. 5, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract Protein biological function depends on structural flexibility and change. From cellular communication through membrane ion channels to oxygen uptake and delivery by haemoglobin, structural changes are critical. It has been suggested that vibrations that extend through the protein play a crucial role in controlling these structural changes. While nature may utilize such long-range vibrations for optimization of biological processes, bench-top characterization of these extended structural motions for engineered biochemistry has been elusive. Here we show the first optical observation of long-range protein vibrational modes. This is achieved by orientation-sensitive terahertz near-field microscopy measurements of chicken egg white lysozyme single crystals. Underdamped modes are found to exist for frequencies >10 cm−1. The existence of these persisting motions indicates that damping and intermode coupling are weaker than previously assumed. The methodology developed permits protein engineering based on dynamical network optimization.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms4076 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:5:y:2014:i:1:d:10.1038_ncomms4076

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/ncomms4076

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().