Pulse fluorimetry study of energy transfers between tryptophan residues and NADPH in beef liver glutamate dehydrogenase complexes.

A method is proposed to determine the rates of singlet energy transfers in an array of chromophores containing a finite number of donors and fluorescent acceptors. This method is based on measurements of transfer efficiency coupled with pulse fluorimetry. Three classes of donors can be distinguished which differ in their energy transfer rate. The rates of the first, the second and the third class are respectively greater than, of the order of, and smaller than the emission rate. The method is applied to the study of the energy transfers from tryptophan residues to NADPH, in ternary and quaternary glutamate dehydrogenase complexes. Practically, all these tryptophan residues belong to the first class. They can be divided into two subclasses having different transfer rate values. The distance between these residues and the NADPH site are of the order of 2.5 nm. In addition, the ligand binding induces a protein conformation change, leading to a fluorescence quenching of the tryptophanyl emission.