Vibronic coupling effect on circular dichroism spectrum: Carotenoid-retinal interaction in xanthorhodopsin

The role of vibronic coupling of antenna carotenoid and retinal in xanthorhodopsin (XR) in its circular dichroism (CD) spectrum is examined computationally. A vibronic exciton model combined with a transition-density-fragment interaction (TDFI) method is developed, and applied to absorption and CD spectral calculations of XR. The TDFI method is based on the electronic Coulomb and exchange interactions between transition densities for individual chromophores [K. J. Fujimoto, J. Chem. Phys. 137, 034101 (2012)], which provides a quantitative description of electronic coupling energy. The TDFI calculation reveals a dominant contribution of the Coulomb interaction to the electronic coupling energy and a negligible contribution of the exchange interaction, indicating that the antenna function of carotenoid results from the Forster type of excitation-energy transfer, not from the Dexter one. The calculated absorption and CD spectra successfully reproduce the main features of the experimental results, which allow us to investigate the mechanism of biphasic CD spectrum observed in XR. The results indicate that vibronic coupling between carotenoid and retinal plays a significant role in the shape of the CD spectrum. Further analysis reveals that the negative value of electronic coupling directly contributes to the biphasic shape of CD spectrum. This study also reveals that the C6-C7 bond rotation of salinixanthin is not the main factor for the biphasic CD spectrum although it gives a non-negligible contribution to the spectral shift. The present method is useful for analyzing the molecular mechanisms underlying the chromophore-chromophore interactions in biological systems.