Characteristic noise features in light transmission across membrane protein undergoing photocycle

TL;DR

This paper introduces a noise measurement technique using pump-probe near field microscopy to study the photocycle dynamics of membrane proteins like bacteriorhodopsin, revealing characteristic frequency distributions linked to molecular processes.

Contribution

It presents a novel noise analysis method for visualizing and understanding the dynamical processes in membrane proteins during their photocycle.

Findings

Characteristic frequency distributions in noise spectra relate to photocycle kinetics.

Insights into protein dynamics vary with temperature, humidity, and additional pumping.

Method enables non-invasive study of protein structural changes.

Abstract

We demonstrate a technique based on noise measurements which can be utilized to study dynamical processes in protein assembly. Direct visualization of dynamics in membrane protein system such as bacteriorhodopsin (bR) upon photostimulation are quite challenging. bR represents a model system where the stimulus-triggered structural dynamics and biological functions are directly correlated. Our method utilizes a pump-probe near field microscopy method in the transmission mode and involves analyzing the transmittance fluctuations from a finite size of molecular assembly. Probability density distributions indicating the effects of finite size and statistical correlations appear as a characteristic frequency distribution in the noise spectra of bR whose origin can be traced to photocycle kinetics. Valuable insight into the molecular processes were obtained from the noise studies of bR and its mutant D96N as a function of external parameters such as temperature, humidity or presence of an additional pump source.