Chain-length and mode-delocalization dependent amide-I anharmonicity in peptide oligomers

摘要

The diagonal anharmonicities of the amide-I mode in the alanine oligomers are examined in the normal-mode basis by ab initio calculations. The selected oligomers range from dimer to heptamer, in either the α-helical or β-sheet conformations. It is found that the anharmonicity varies from mode to mode within the same oligomer. For a given amide-I mode, the anharmonicity is closely related to the delocalization extent of the mode: the less it delocalizes, the larger the anharmonicity it has. Thus, the single-mode potential energy distribution (PED _(max)) can be used as an indicator of the magnitude of the anharmonicity. It is found that as the peptide chain length increases, the averaged diagonal anharmonicity generally decreases; however, the sum of the averaged diagonal and off-diagonal anharmonicities within a peptide roughly remains a constant for all the oligomers examined, indicating the excitonic characteristics of the amide-I modes. Excitonic coupling tends to decrease the diagonal anharmonicities in a coupled system with multiple chromophores, which explains the observed behavior of the anharmonicities. The excitonic nature of the amide-I band in peptide oligomers is thus verified by the anharmonic computations. Isotopic substitution effect on the anharmonicities and mode localizations of the amide-I modes in peptides is also discussed.