Gas-phase peptide structures unraveled by far-IR spectroscopy: combining IR-UV ion-dip experiments with Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics simulations

Abstract

Vibrational spectroscopy provides an important probe of the three-dimensional structures of peptides. With increasing size, these IR spectra become very complex and to extract structural information, comparison with theoretical spectra is essential. Harmonic DFT calculations have become a common workhorse for predicting vibrational frequencies of small neutral and ionized gaseous peptides. Although the far-IR region (<500 cm(-1)) may contain a wealth of structural information, as recognized in condensed phase studies, DFT often performs poorly in predicting the far-IR spectra of peptides. Here, Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics (BOMD) is applied to predict the far-IR signatures of two γ-turn peptides. Combining experiments and simulations, far-IR spectra can provide structural information on gas-phase peptides superior to that extracted from mid-IR and amide A features.

Keywords: IR spectroscopy; conformation analysis; molecular dynamics; peptides; structure elucidation.