American Chemical Society, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 23(125), p. 6868-6869, 2003
DOI: 10.1021/ja035087d
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We show that the ab initio CASPT2//CASSCF strategy previously used to investigate the ground and excited states of the chromophore of the vision receptor rhodopsin (Rh) in vacuo can be successfully implemented in a QM/MM scheme allowing for CASPT2//CASSCF/AMBER geometry optimization and excited state property evaluation in proteins. Two receptor models (Rh-1 and Rh-2) incorporating different reduced chromophores are investigated. It is shown that Rh-2 features a chromophore equilibrium structure with the correct helicity and a lambdamax that is only 52 nm blue-shifted from the observed value. This result should open the way to a qualitatively correct ab initio QM/MM modeling of the early excited state transient species involved in the vision process.