Conspectus
Biological functions essentially consist of
a series of chemical
reactions, including intermolecular interactions, and also involve
the cooperation of a number of biological molecules performing these
reactions. To understand this function at the molecular level, all
steps of the reactions must be elucidated. However, since the biosystems
including the surrounding environment are notably large, the reactions
have to be elucidated from several different approaches. A variety
of techniques have been developed to obtain structural information,
and the knowledge of the three-dimensional structure of biomolecules
has increased dramatically. Contrarily, the current information on
reaction dynamics, which is essential for understanding reactions,
is still not enough. Although frequently used techniques, such as
spectroscopy, have revealed several important processes of reactions,
there are various hidden dynamics that are not detected by these methods
(silent dynamics). For example, although water molecules are essential
for bioreactions, dynamics of the protein–water interaction
are very difficult to trace and spectrally silent. Transient association/dissociations
of proteins with partner proteins are difficult to observe. Another
important property to understand the reaction of proteins is fluctuations,
which are random movements that do not change the average structure
and energy. The importance of fluctuations has been pointed out in
order to explain enzymatic activity; however, it is extremely difficult
to detect changes in fluctuation during a reaction. In this Account,
unique time-resolved methods, time-resolved thermodynamics, and time-resolved
diffusion methods, both of which are able to detect silent dynamics
in solution at physiological temperature, are described.
Thermodynamic
properties are important for characterizing materials,
in particular, macromolecules such as biomolecules. Therefore, the
data available regarding these properties, for several stable proteins,
is abundant. However, it is almost impossible to characterize short-lived
intermediate species in irreversible reactions using traditional thermodynamic
techniques. Similarly, although the translational diffusion coefficient
is a useful property to determine the protein size and intermolecular
interactions, there have been no reports revealing reaction dynamics.
The transient grating (TG) method enables us to measure these quantities
in a time-resolved manner for a variety of irreversible reactions.
With this method, it is now possible to study biomolecule reactions
from the viewpoint of thermodynamic properties and diffusion, and
to elucidate reaction dynamics that cannot be detected by other spectroscopic
methods.
Here, the principles of the methodologies used, their
characteristic
advantages, and their applications to protein reactions are described.
The TG measurements of octopus rhodopsin revealed a spectrally hidden
intermediate and determined an energetic profile along the reaction
coordinate. This emphasizes that the measureme...