Proteins intrinsic electronic conduction

Although important from the point of view of the intrinsic stabihty of proteins upon UV irradiation, this issue has been only seldom addressed in gas phase experiments. Attention has been drawn to the field by pioneering excited-state calculations in the past decade conducted on peptides [177, 202-209], following an approach already successful for showing the role of Jto excited states in the deactivation of aromatic compounds, such as phenol or indole [210]. These authors emphasised the possible role of several excited states, namely a locally excited (LE) state and an intrabackbone charge transfer (CT) state to convert efficiently the photodeposited electronic energy into vibrational energy. The proposed deactivation mechanism involves a series of conical intersections (Cl), which enables sequential... 

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