Abstract
1,4-Naphthoquinone (NQ) and its monosubstituted derivatives, 2-methyl, 2-ethyl, and 2-butyl-1,4-naphthoquinone, have been incorporated into the A1 binding site of photosystem I (PS I) after organic solvent extraction of the native phylloquinone. The charge separated state P700+NQ- has been studied by multifrequency transient EPR. The Q-band (35 GHz) spectra of fully deuterated 2-methyl-1,4-NQ-d8 and 2-ethyl-1,4-NQ-d10 show sufficient spectral resolution for the orientation of the quinone g tensor and thus the headgroup of the molecule to be determined. All orientation parameters of the substituted NQs are found to be the same as those established for native phylloquinone in PS I. However, for 2-ethyl-1,4-NQ and 2-butyl-1,4-NQ the X- and Q-band spectra exhibit a well resolved 1:2:1 hyperfine splitting. From the fact that it is absent when the first methylene group of the side chain is selectively deuterated, the splitting is assigned to the hyperfine coupling of the methylene protons. The principal values of the axially symmetric hyperfine coupling tensor are determined to be |Axx| = 12.2 MHz, |Ayy| = 16.8 MHz, |Azz| = 12.2 MHz, and aiso = 13.7 MHz. The large methylene proton hyperfine coupling arises from a high spin density on the ring carbon atom to which the alkyl tail is attached. This in turn suggests that only one of the carbonyl groups of 2-alkyl-1,4-NQ is H-bonded to the protein and that the alkyl tail must be in the ortho position relative to the carbonyl group with the H bond. This implies that the alkyl side chain of the substituted NQs resides in the space normally occupied by the methyl group of phylloquinone and not that of the phytyl tail, which is meta to the H-bonded carbonyl group according to the X-ray structure. In addition, the hyperfine tensor indicates that the first two C−C bonds of the alkyl tail must be coplanar with the aromatic ring. However, the X-ray structure of PS I shows, for the native phylloquinone, that the phytyl tail is bent out of the quinone plane with the second C−C bond.
