Femtosecond Kinetics of Photoconversion of the Higher Plant Photoreceptor Phytochrome Carrying Native and Modified Chromophores

The photoprocesses of native (phyA of oat), and of C-terminally truncated recombinant phytochromes, assembled instead of the native phytochromobilin with phycocyanobilin (PCB-65 kDa-phy) and iso-phycocyanobilin (iso-PCB-65 kDa-phy) chromophores, have been studied by femtosecond transient absorption spectroscopy in both their red absorbing phytochrome (P r) and far-red absorbing phytochrome (P fr) forms. Native P r phytochrome shows an excitation wavelength dependence of the kinetics with three main picosecond components. The formation kinetics of the first ground-state intermediate I 700, absorbing at ∼690 nm, is mainly described by 28 ps or 40 ps components in native and PCB phytochrome, respectively, whereas additional ∼15 and 50 ps components describe conformational dynamics and equilibria among different local minima on the excited-state hypersurface. No significant amount of I 700 formation can be observed on our timescale for iso-PCB phytochrome. We suggest that iso-PCB-65 kDa-phy either interacts with the protein differently leading to a more twisted and/or less protonated configuration, or undergoes P r to P fr isomerization primarily via a different configurational pathway, largely circumventing I 700 as an intermediate. The isomerization process is accompanied by strong coherent oscillations due to wavepacket motion on the excited-state surface for both phytochrome forms. The femto- to (sub-)nanosecond kinetics of the P fr forms is again quite similar for the native and the PCB phytochromes. After an ultrafast excited-state relaxation within ∼150 fs, the chromophores return to the first ground-state intermediate in 400–800 fs followed by two additional ground-state intermediates which are formed with 2–3 ps and ∼400 ps lifetimes. We call the first ground-state intermediate in native phytochrome I fr·750, due to its pronounced absorption at that wavelength. The other intermediates are termed I fr·675 and pseudo-P r. The absorption spectrum of the latter already closely resembles the absorption of the P r chromophore. PCB-65 kDa-phy shows a very similar kinetics, although many of the detailed spectral features in the transients seen in native phy are blurred, presumably due to wider inhomogeneous distribution of the chromophore conformation. Iso-PCB-65 kDa-phy shows similar features to the PCB-65 kDa-phy, with some additional blue-shift of the transient spectra of ∼10 nm. The sub-200 fs component is, however, absent, and the picosecond lifetimes ar