Probing the remarkable thermal kinetics of visual rhodopsin with E181Q and S186A mutants.

We recently reported a very unusual temperature dependence of the rate of thermal reaction of wild type bovine rhodopsin: the Arrhenius plot exhibits a sharp "elbow" at 47 °C and, in the upper temperature range, an unexpectedly large activation energy (114 ± 8 kcal/mol) and an enormous prefactor (10 s). In this report, we present new measurements and a theoretical model that establish convincingly that this behavior results from a collective, entropy-driven breakup of the rigid hydrogen bonding networks (HBNs) that hinder the reaction at lower temperatures. For E181Q and S186A, two rhodopsin mutants that disrupt the HBNs near the binding pocket of the 11-cis retinyl chromophore, we observe significant decreases in the activation energy (∼90 kcal/mol) and prefactor (∼10 s), consistent with the conclusion that the reaction rate is enhanced by breakup of the HBN. The results provide insights into the molecular mechanism of dim-light vision and eye diseases caused by inherited mutations in the rhodopsin gene that perturb the HBNs.