Circular dichroism of carotenoids in bacterial light-harvesting complexes: experiments and modeling.

In this work we investigate the origin and characteristics of the circular dichroism (CD) spectrum of rhodopin glucoside and lycopene in the light-harvesting 2 complex of Rhodopseudomonas acidophila and Rhodospirillum molischianum, respectively. We successfully model their absorption and CD spectra based on the high-resolution structures. We assume that these spectra originate from seven interacting transition dipole moments: the first corresponds to the 0-0 transition of the carotenoid, whereas the remaining six represent higher vibronic components of the S2 state. From the absorption spectra we get an estimate of the Franck-Condon factors of these transitions. Furthermore, we investigate the broadening mechanisms that lead to the final shape of the spectra and get an insight into the interaction energy between carotenoids. Finally, we examine the consequences of rotations of the carotenoid transition dipole moment and of deformations in the light-harvesting 2 complex rings. Comparison of the modeled carotenoid spectra with modeled spectra of the bacteriochlorophyll QY region leads to a refinement of the modeling procedure and an improvement of all calculated results. We therefore propose that the combined carotenoid and bacteriochlorophyll CD can be used as an accurate reflection of the overall structure of the light-harvesting complexes.

Identification of the upper exciton component of the B850 bacteriochlorophylls of the LH2 antenna complex, using a B800-free mutant of Rhodobacter sphaeroides.

In this paper, we report the circular dichroism (CD) spectra of two types of LH2-only mutants of Rhodobacter sphaeroides. In the first, only the wild type LH2 is present, while i the second, the B800 binding site of LH2 has been either destabilized or removed. For the first time, we have identified a band in the CD spectrum of LH2, located at approximately 780 nm, that can be ascribed to the high exciton component of the B850 band. The experimental spectra have been modeled by theoretical calculations. On this basis, the average interaction strength between the monomers in the B850 ring can be estimated to be approximately 300 cm-1. In addition, we suggest that in LH2 of Rb. sphaeroides the angles made by the Qy transitions of the B850 BChls with respect to the plane of the ring are slightly different from those calculated from the crystal structure of the Rhodopseudomonas acidophila LH2 complex.