Modification of Enzyme Activity by Vibrational Strong Coupling of Water. Issue 43 (17th September 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Vergauwe, Robrecht M. A.; Thomas, Anoop; Nagarajan, Kalaivanan; Shalabney, Atef; George, Jino; Chervy, Thibault; Seidel, Marcus; Devaux, Eloïse; Torbeev, Vladimir; Ebbesen, Thomas W.
• Is Part Of: Angewandte Chemie international edition. Volume 58:Issue 43(2019)
• Page Start: 15324
• Page End: 15328
• Publication Date: 2019-09-17
• Subjects: enzymes -- light-matter strong coupling -- optical cavities -- vibrational spectroscopy -- water; Chemistry -- Periodicals; 540
• DOI: 10.1002/anie.201908876
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1433-7851

Abstract

Abstract: Vibrational strong coupling (VSC) has recently emerged as a completely new tool for influencing chemical reactivity. It harnesses electromagnetic vacuum fluctuations through the creation of hybrid states of light and matter, called polaritonic states, in an optical cavity resonant to a molecular absorption band. Here, we investigate the effect of vibrational strong coupling of water on the enzymatic activity of pepsin, where a water molecule is directly involved in the enzyme's chemical mechanism. We observe an approximately 4.5‐fold decrease of the apparent second‐order rate constant k cat / K m when coupling the water stretching vibration, whereas no effect was detected for the strong coupling of the bending vibration. The possibility of modifying enzymatic activity by coupling water demonstrates the potential of VSC as a new tool to study biochemical reactivity. Abstract : Quantum light‐matter strong coupling is currently emerging as non‐invasive method to alter chemical reactivity. Enzymatic activity can be modified by strongly coupling the vibrational stretching transitions of water. The activity of pepsin decreased 4.5‐fold when coupling the OH stretching vibration but remained unaltered when coupling the bending vibration.