Photochemical tyrosine oxidation with a hydrogen-bonded proton acceptor by bidirectional proton-coupled electron transfer

Abstract

Amino acid radical generation and transport are fundamentally important to numerous essential biological processes to which small molecule models lend valuable mechanistic insights. Pyridyl-amino acid-methyl esters are appended to a rhenium(I) tricarbonyl 1,10-phenanthroline core to yield rhenium–amino acid complexes with tyrosine ([Re]–Y–OH) and phenylalanine ([Re]–F). The emission from the [Re] center is more significantly quenched for [Re]–Y–OH upon addition of base. Time-resolved studies establish that excited-state quenching occurs by a combination of static and dynamic mechanisms. The degree of quenching depends on the strength of the base, consistent with a proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) quenching mechanism. Comparative studies of [Re]–Y–OH and [Re]–F enable a detailed mechanistic analysis of a bidirectional PCET process.