Anharmonic vibrational modes of nucleic acid bases revealed by 2D IR spectroscopy

Polarization-dependent two-dimensional infrared (2D IR) spectra of the purine and pyrimadine base vibrations of five nucleotide monophosphates (NMPs) were acquired in D(2)O at neutral pH in the frequency range 1500-1700 cm(-1). The distinctive cross-peaks between the ring deformations and carbonyl stretches of NMPs indicate that these vibrational modes are highly coupled, in contrast with the traditional peak assignment, which is based on a simple local mode picture such as C═O, C═N, and C═C double bond stretches. A model of multiple anharmonically coupled oscillators was employed to characterize the transition energies, vibrational anharmonicities and couplings, and transition dipole strengths and orientations. No simple or intuitive structural correlations are found to readily assign the spectral features, except in the case of guanine and cytosine, which contain a single local CO stretching mode. To help interpret the nature of these vibrational modes, we performed density functional theory (DFT) calculations and found that multiple ring vibrations are coupled and delocalized over the purine and pyrimidine rings. Generally, there is close correspondence between the experimental and computational results, provided that the DFT calculations include explicit waters solvating hydrogen-bonding sites. These results provide direct experimental evidence of the delocalized nature of the nucleotide base vibrations via a nonperturbative fashion and will serve as building blocks for constructing a structure-based model of DNA and RNA vibrational spectroscopy.