Understanding proton affinity of tyrosine sidechain in hydrophobic confinement

Abstract

Tyrosine is an important amino acid residue that plays a key role in several biochemical transformations such as, abstraction/donation of proton from/by its sidechain. We present here a density functional study on the proton affinity of tyrosine sidechain suspended inside the core of a single walled carbon nanotube that mimics the environment of protein structural pores and molecular channels. Tyrosine is found to exhibit a lower reactivity on confinement and unlike several other polar amino acid sidechains, its reactivity does not respond to hydrogen bonding with neighbouring hydroxyl groups. © Indian Academy of Sciences.