A complete understanding of the physics underlying the varied colors of firefly bioluminescence remains elusive because it is difficult to disentangle different enzyme-lumophore interactions. Experiments on isolated ions are useful to establish a proper reference when there are no microenvironmental perturbations. Here, we use action spectroscopy to compare the absorption by the firefly oxyluciferin lumophore isolated in vacuo and complexed with a single water molecule. While the process relevant to bioluminescence within the luciferase cavity is light emission, the absorption data presented here provide a unique insight into how the electronic states of oxyluciferin are altered by microenvironmental perturbations. For the bare ion we observe broad absorption with a maximum at 548 ± 10 nm, and addition of a water molecule is found to blue-shift the absorption by approximately 50 nm (0.23 eV). Test calculations at various levels of theory uniformly predict a blue-shift in absorption caused by a single water molecule, but are only qualitatively in agreement with experiment highlighting limitations in what can be expected from methods commonly used in studies on oxyluciferin. Combined molecular dynamics simulations and time-dependent density functional theory calculations closely reproduce the broad experimental peaks and also indicate that the preferred binding site for the water molecule is the phenolate oxygen of the anion. Predicting the effects of microenvironmental interactions on the electronic structure of the oxyluciferin anion with high accuracy is a nontrivial task for theory, and our experimental results therefore serve as important benchmarks for future calculations.

No abstract

Biomolecules function by adopting multiple conformations. Such dynamics are governed by the conformation landscape whose study requires characterization of the ground and excited conformation states. Here, the conformational landscape of a molecule is sampled by exciting an initial gas-phase molecular conformer into diverse conformation states, using soft molecule–surface collision (0.5–5.0 eV). The resulting ground and excited molecular conformations, adsorbed on the surface, are imaged at the single-molecule level. This technique permits the exploration of oligosaccharide conformations, until now, limited by the high flexibility of oligosaccharides and ensemble-averaged analytical methods. As a model for cellulose, cellohexaose chains are observed in two conformational extremes, the typical “extended” chain and the atypical “coiled” chain—the latter identified as the gas-phase conformer preserved on the surface. Observing conformations between these two extremes reveals the physical properties of cellohexaose, behaving as a rigid ribbon that becomes flexible when twisted. The conformation space of any molecule that can be electrosprayed can now be explored.

Using electrospray ion beam deposition, we collide a complex molecule Reichardt's Dye (C 41 H 30 NO + ) at low, hyperthermal translational energy (2 -50 eV) with a Cu(100) surface and image the outcome at single-molecule level by Scanning Tunneling Microscopy. We observe bond-selective reaction induced by the translational kinetic energy. The collision impulse compresses the molecule and bends specific bonds, prompting them to react selectively. This dynamics drives the system to seek thermally inaccessible reactive pathways, since the compression timescale (sub-ps) is much shorter than the thermalization timescale (ns), thereby yielding reaction products that are unobtainable thermally

Electron-induced reaction of physisorbed meta-diiodobenzene (mDIB) on Cu(110) at 4.6 K was studied by Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and molecular dynamics theory. Single-electron dissociation of the first C-I bond led to in-plane rotation of an iodophenyl (IPh) intermediate, whose motion could be treated as a "clock" of the reaction dynamics. Alternative reaction mechanisms, successive and concerted, were observed giving different product distributions. In the successive mechanism, two electrons successively broke single C-I bonds; the first C-I bond breaking yielded IPh that rotated directionally by three different angles, with the second C-I bond breaking giving chemisorbed I atoms (#2) at three preferred locations corresponding to the C-I bond alignments in the prior rotated IPh configurations. In the concerted mechanism a single electron broke two C-I bonds, giving two chemisorbed I atoms; significantly these were found at angles corresponding to the C-I bond direction for unrotated mDIB. Molecular dynamics accounted for the difference in reaction outcomes between the successive and the concerted mechanisms in terms of the time required for the IPh to rotate in-plane; in successive reaction the time delay between first and second C-I bond-breaking events allowed the IPh to rotate, whereas in concerted reaction the computed delay between excitation and reaction (∼1 ps) was too short for molecular rotation before the second C-I bond broke. The dependence of the extent of motion at a surface on the delay between first and second bond breaking suggested a novel means to "clock" sub-picosecond dynamics by imaging the products arising from varying time delays between impacting pairs of electrons.

By inducing chemical reactions at chosen collision miss-distances, we introduce a new measurable in surface reaction dynamics.

Correlating the structures and properties of a polymer to its monomer sequence is key to understanding how its higher hierarchy structures are formed and how its macroscopic material properties emerge. Carbohydrate polymers, such as cellulose and chitin, are the most abundant materials found in nature whose structures and properties have been characterized only at the submicrometer level. Here, by imaging single-cellulose chains at the nanoscale, we determine the structure and local flexibility of cellulose as a function of its sequence (primary structure) and conformation (secondary structure). Changing the primary structure by chemical substitutions and geometrical variations in the secondary structure allow the chain flexibility to be engineered at the single-linkage level. Tuning local flexibility opens opportunities for the bottom-up design of carbohydrate materials.

In Surface-Aligned-Reactions (SAR), the degrees of freedom of chemical reactions are restricted and therefore the reaction outcome is selected. Using the inherent corrugation of a Cu(110) substrate the adsorbate molecules can be positioned and aligned and the impact parameter, the collision miss-distance, can be chosen. Here, substitution reaction for a zero impact parameter collision gives an outcome which resembles the classic Newton’s cradle in which an incident mass ‘knocks-on’ the same mass in the collision partner, here F + CF3 → (CF3)′ + (F)′ at a copper surface. The mechanism of knock-on was shown by Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy to involve reversal of the CF3 umbrella as in Walden inversion, with ejection of (F)′ product along the continuation of the F-reagent direction of motion, in collinear reaction.