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Updated: Jul 30, 2026

Proton Transfer and Protein Conformation Dynamics in Photosensitive Proteins by Time-resolved Step-scan Fourier-transform Infrared Spectroscopy
Published on: June 27, 2014
Excited-state lifetimes of far-infrared collective modes in proteins
Aihua Xie1, Alexander F G van der Meer, Robert H Austin
1Department of Physics, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078, USA.
Abstract:
Vibrational excitations of low frequency collective modes are essential for functionally important conformational transitions in proteins. Here we report the first direct measurement on the lifetime of vibrational excitations of the collective modes at 87 microm (115 cm(-1)) in bacteriorhodopsin, a transmembrane protein. The data show that these modes have extremely long lifetime of vibrational excitations, over 500 ps, accommodating 1500 vibrations. We suggest that there is a connection between this relatively slow anharmonic relaxation rate of approximately 10(9) sec(-1) and the similar observed rate of conformational transitions in proteins, which require multilevel vibrational excitations.
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