Electrostatics of the photosynthetic bacterial reaction center. Protonation of Glu L 212 and Asp L 213 — A new method of calculation

• A simple electrostatics gives erroneous results for energies of transfer from water.
• We account for the hydrogen bonds breaking in calculation of the transfer energies.
• We estimate the local dielectric permittivities from the electrogenesis data.
• Calculations reproduce the pH dependences of dissociation degrees and proton uptake.
• For thioredoxin, calculated pK of Asp 26 agrees reasonably with the experiment.

Continuum electrostatic calculation of the transfer energies of anions from water into aprotic solvents gives the figures erroneous by order of magnitude. This is due to the hydrogen bond disruption that suggests the necessity to reconsider the traditional approach of the purely electrostatic calculation of the transfer energy from water into protein. In this paper, the method combining the experimental estimates of the transfer energies from water into aprotic solvent and the electrostatic calculation of the transfer energies from aprotic solvent into protein is proposed. Hydrogen bonds between aprotic solvent and solute are taken into account by introducing an imaginary aprotic medium incapable to form hydrogen bonds with the solute. Besides, a new treatment of the heterogeneous intraprotein dielectric permittivity based on the microscopic protein structure and electrometric measurements is elaborated. The method accounts semi-quantitatively for the electrostatic effect of diverse charged amino acid substitutions in the donor and acceptor parts of the photosynthetic bacterial reaction center from Rhodobacter sphaeroides. Analysis of the volatile secondary acceptor site QB revealed that in the conformation with a minimal distance between quinone QB and Glu L 212 the proton uptake upon the reduction of QB is prompted by Glu L 212 in alkaline and by Asp L 213 in slightly acidic regions. This agrees with the pH dependences of protonation degrees and the proton uptake. The method of pK calculation was applied successfully also for dissociation of Asp 26 in bacterial thioredoxin.