Empirical potentials for recombination reactions of photo-dissociated ligands. Final report

The aim of this research was to design an appropriate potential and simulation methodology to describe the effect of radiation on ligands bound to metal-proteins. As model systems the authors investigated myoglobin, hemoglobin and their mutants. The great advantage of the globins as a target for theoretical studies is the wealth of experimental data available for them. They focused on studies that combine fast spectroscopy with mutation experiments. The mutations make it possible to examine detailed changes in the kinetic curves with atomically detailed information. The first spectroscopy, which is in the same time scale as of ordinary molecular dynamics (sub nanoseconds), makes it possible to compare the results of the computations to raw experimental data