Direct Measurement of the Isomerization Barrier of the Isolated Retinal Chromophore1. Issue 16 (10th March 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Dilger, Jonathan; Musbat, Lihi; Sheves, Mordechai; Bochenkova, Anastasia V.; Clemmer, David E.; Toker, Yoni
• Is Part Of: Angewandte Chemie international edition. Volume 54:Issue 16(2015)
• Page Start: 4748
• Page End: 4752
• Publication Date: 2015-03-10
• Subjects: Chemistry -- Periodicals; 540
• DOI: 10.1002/anie.201411894
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1433-7851

Abstract

<abstract abstract-type="main" xml:lang="en"> <title>Abstract</title> <p>Isomerizations of the retinal chromophore were investigated using the IMS‐IMS technique. Four different structural features of the chromophore were observed, isolated, excited collisionally, and the resulting isomer and fragment distributions were measured. By establishing the threshold activation voltages for isomerization for each of the reaction pathways, and by measuring the threshold activation voltage for fragmentation, the relative energies of the isomers as well as the energy barriers for isomerization were determined. The energy barrier for a single <italic>cis–trans</italic> isomerization is (0.64±0.05) eV, which is significantly lower than that observed for the reaction within opsin proteins.</p> </abstract>