Quenching probe/protein complexes

Kolubayev T, Geacintov N E, Paillotin G and Breton J 1985 Domain sizes in chloroplasts and chlorophyll-protein complexes probed by fluorescence yield quenching induced by singlet-triplet exciton annihilation Biochimica Biophys. Acta 808 66-76... 

Several reviews have been written concerning the phosphorescence of intrinsic indole probes [201] and the use of triplet excited states to probe proteins [202]. Triplet tryptophan can be used to probe proteins, but its photophysics is complex, because in a homogeneous solution, the decays of the excited triplet tryptophan or indole derivatives do not usually follow first-order kinetics, due to protonation, triplet-triplet annihilation, or self-quenching [203,204]. In ad-... 

Spectroscopies are also used to experimentally probe transient species along a reaction coordinate, where often the sample has been rapidly freeze quenched to trap intermediates. An important theme in bioinorganic chemistry is that active sites often exhibit unique spectroscopic features, compared to small model complexes with the same metal ion.8 These unusual spectroscopic features reflect novel geometric and electronic structures available to the metal ion in the protein environment. These unique spectral features are low-energy intense absorption bands and unusual spin Hamiltonian parameters. We have shown that these reflect highly covalent sites (i.e., where the metal d-orbitals have significant ligand character) that can activate the metal site for reactivity.9... 

Table 24 Quenching of Extrinsic Triplet State Probes Complexed to Proteins...

In the static quenching, one uses intrinsic or extrinsic fluorophore to probe the interaction between two macromolecules. The fluorophore should be bound to one of the two proteins only (case of the extrinsic fluorophores) or should be part of it (case of the intrinsic fluorophores) if we want to perform such experiments. Also, binding parameters of the fluorophore-macromolecule complex can be determined by following fluorescence modification of the fluorophore observables. 

In order to obtain independent evidence for the involvement of the cyclodextrin cavity, fluorescence measurements were carried out for copper(II) ternary complexes with L- or D-tryptophan. In fact, the fluorescence spectrum of tryptophan has already been shown to be sensitive to the polarity of the microenvironment in which it is located and has been used in many studies as a probe for the conformation of proteins and peptides [53]. As for many fluorophores, the indole fluorescence of Trp is quenched by the copper(II) ion this effect has been used as a measure of the stability constants of copper(II) complexes [54, 55]. In a recent work, it has been shown that the fluorescence of dansyl derivatives of amino acids undergo enantioselective fluorescence quenching by chiral copper(n) complexes and that fluorescence measurements can be used for the study of enatioselectivity in the formation of ternary complexes in solution [56]. Bearing this in mind, we performed the same type of experiments by adding increasing amounts of the [Cu(CDhm)] + complex to a solution of D- or L-tryptophan [36]. The fluorescence titration curve shows that the artificial receptor inhibits the indole... 

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