A computational study on the stability of the protonated Schiff base of retinal in rhodopsin

We investigated the effect of amino acids in rhodopsin on the protonation state of the Schiff base (SB) retinal. We constructed a model system consisting of SB retinal, Glu113 (counterion), and eight residues. For this model, we considered two states of the SB retinal, namely, the protonated/deprotonated state. We then performed ab initio MO calculations at the RHF/6-31g* level. As a result, the protonated state was stabler than the deprotonated state. Interestingly, we observed an additive rule for the contribution to the stabilization energy due to each amino acid. Above all, it turned out that Ser186 and Cys187 play a significant role in the stability.