UC Irvine

Time‐resolved fluorescence of single tryptophan proteins have demonstrated the complexity of protein dynamic and protein structure. In particular, for some single tryptophan proteins, their fluorescence decay is best described by a distribution of fluorescence lifetimes rather than one or two lifetimes. Such results have provided further confirmation that the protein system is one which fluctuates between a hierarchy of many conformational substates. With this scenario as a theoretical framework, the correlations between protein dynamic and structure are investigated by studying the time‐resolved fluorescence and anisotropy decay of holo and apo human superoxide dismutase (HSOD) at different denaturant concentrations. As a function of guanidine hydrochloride (GdHCl), the width of the fluorescence lifetime distribution of HSOD displays a maximum which is not coincident with the fully denatured form of HSOD at 6.5M GdHCl. Furthermore, the width of the fluorescence lifetime distribution for the fully denatured forms of holo and apo HSOD is greater than that of the native forms. Copyright © 1992 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.