An Improved Diabatization Scheme for Computing the Electronic Circular Dichroism of Proteins

We advance the quality of first-principles calculations of protein electronic circular dichroism (CD) through an amelioration of a key deficiency of a previous procedure that involved diabatization of electronic states on the amide chromophore (to obtain interamide couplings) in a β-strand conformation of a diamide. This yields substantially improved calculated far-ultraviolet (far-UV) electronic circular dichroism (CD) spectra for β-sheet conformations. The interamide couplings from the diabatization procedure for 13 secondary structural elements (13 diamide structures) are applied to compute the CD spectra for seven example proteins: myoglobin (α helix), jacalin (β strand), concanavalin A (β type I), elastase (β type II), papain (α + β), 3₁₀-helix bundle (3₁₀-helix) and snow flea antifreeze protein (polyproline). In all cases, except concanavalin A and papain, the CD spectra computed using the interamide couplings from the diabatization procedure yield improved agreement with experiment with respect to previous first-principles calculations.