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Related Experiment Videos

Retinal has a highly dipolar vertically excited singlet state: implications for vision.

R Mathies, L Stryer

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
    |July 1, 1976
    PubMed
    Summary

    Intense electric fields reveal that retinal and its Schiff bases develop significant dipole moments upon excitation. This charge shift is crucial for understanding visual pigment function and light-induced molecular changes.

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    Area of Science:

    • Photochemistry
    • Molecular Spectroscopy
    • Biophysics

    Background:

    • Retinal and its derivatives are key chromophores in vision.
    • Understanding their excited-state properties is vital for elucidating visual transduction.
    • Electric field perturbation offers a method to probe molecular dipole moments.

    Purpose of the Study:

    • To measure ground-state and excited-state dipole moments of retinal and related Schiff bases.
    • To investigate the effect of intense electric fields on their absorption spectra.
    • To correlate these properties with their function in visual pigments.

    Main Methods:

    • Application of intense electric fields to solutions of all-trans retinal, its unprotonated Schiff base, and its protonated Schiff base.
    • Analysis of field-induced changes in extinction coefficients as a function of wavelength.

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  • Determination of ground-state (mug) and excited-state (deltamu) dipole moments and their orientations.

    • Main Results:

    • All three molecules exhibit large excited-state dipole moments (deltamu = 15.6, 9.9, 12 D).
    • Dipole moments are aligned with the molecular long axis, with charge shifting towards the carbonyl/Schiff base end.
    • 11-cis retinal also shows a large deltamu (12.7 +/- 1.4 D).

    Conclusions:

    • Excited-state charge redistribution in retinal is significant and influences its electronic properties.
    • These dipole moments are implicated in controlling absorption maxima in visual pigments.
    • Electrostatic interactions driven by charge shifts may initiate protein conformational changes during visual excitation.