Peptide cation-radicals containing the threonine residue undergo radical-induced dissociations upon collisional activation and photon absorption in the 210-400 nm range. Peptide cation-radicals containing a radical defect at the N-terminal residue, [•Ala-Thr-Ala-Arg+H]+, were generated by electron transfer dissociation (ETD) of peptide dications and characterized by UV-vis photodissociation action spectroscopy combined with time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) calculations of absorption spectra, including thermal vibronic band broadening. The action spectrum of [•Ala-Thr-Ala-Arg+H]+ ions was indicative of the canonical structure of an N-terminally deaminated radical whereas isomeric structures differing in the position of the radical defect and amide bond geometry were excluded. This indicated that exothermic electron transfer to threonine peptide ions did not induce radical isomerizations in the fragment cation-radicals. Several isomeric structures, ion-molecule complexes, and transition states for isomerizations and dissociations were generated and analyzed by DFT and Møller-Plesset perturbational ab initio calculations to aid interpretation of the major dissociations by loss of water, hydroxyl radical, C3H6NO•, C3H7NO, and backbone cleavages. Born-Oppenheimer molecular dynamics (BOMD) in combination with DFT gradient geometry optimizations and intrinsic reaction coordinate analysis were used to search for low-energy cation-radical conformers and transition states. BOMD was also employed to analyze the reaction trajectory for loss of water from ion-molecule complexes.

Department of Chemistry University of Washington Bagley Hall Box 351700 Seattle Washington 98195 1700 United States

Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry Czech Academy of Sciences Flemingovo nám 2 16610 Prague Czech Republic

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Tackling a Curious Case: Generation of Charge-Tagged Guanosine Radicals by Gas-Phase Electron Transfer and Their Characterization by UV-vis Photodissociation Action Spectroscopy and Theory

Photodissociative Cross-Linking of Non-covalent Peptide-Peptide Ion Complexes in the Gas Phase