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  4. Ultraviolet Superradiance from Mega-Networks of Tryptophan in Biological Architectures
 
research article

Ultraviolet Superradiance from Mega-Networks of Tryptophan in Biological Architectures

Babcock, N. S.
•
Montes-Cabrera, G.
•
Oberhofer, K. E.
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April 19, 2024
The Journal of Physical Chemistry B

Networks of tryptophan (Trp)& horbar;an aromatic amino acid with strong fluorescence response & horbar;are ubiquitous in biological systems, forming diverse architectures in transmembrane proteins, cytoskeletal filaments, subneuronal elements, photoreceptor complexes, virion capsids, and other cellular structures. We analyze the cooperative effects induced by ultraviolet (UV) excitation of several biologically relevant Trp mega-networks, thus giving insights into novel mechanisms for cellular signaling and control. Our theoretical analysis in the single-excitation manifold predicts the formation of strongly superradiant states due to collective interactions among organized arrangements of up to >10(5) Trp UV-excited transition dipoles in microtubule architectures, which leads to an enhancement of the fluorescence quantum yield (QY) that is confirmed by our experiments. We demonstrate the observed consequences of this superradiant behavior in the fluorescence QY for hierarchically organized tubulin structures, which increases in different geometric regimes at thermal equilibrium before saturation, highlighting the effect's persistence in the presence of disorder. Our work thus showcases the many orders of magnitude across which the brightest (hundreds of femtoseconds) and darkest (tens of seconds) states can coexist in these Trp lattices.

  • Details
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Type
research article
DOI
10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c07936
Web of Science ID

WOS:001240838800001

Author(s)
Babcock, N. S.
Montes-Cabrera, G.
Oberhofer, K. E.
Chergui, M  
Celardo, G. L.
Kurian, P.
Date Issued

2024-04-19

Publisher

Amer Chemical Soc

Published in
The Journal of Physical Chemistry B
Volume

128

Issue

17

Start page

4035

End page

4046

Subjects

Physical Sciences

•

Fluorescence Dynamics

•

Water

•

Luminescence

•

Tubulin

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LSU  
FunderGrant Number

Guy Foundation

DE-AC02-06CH11357

Guy Foundation Family Trust

P41-GM103311

NIH

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Available on Infoscience
June 19, 2024
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/208769
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