Mechanical deformation and electronic structure of a blue copper azurin in a solid-state junction

Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Protein-based electronics is an emerging field which has attracted considerable attention over the past decade. Here, we present a theoretical study of the formation and electronic structure of a metal-protein-metal junction based on the blue-copper azurin from pse...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Romero-Muñiz, Carlos, Ortega, María, Vilhena Albuquerque D'Orey, José Guilherme, Diéz-Pérez, Ismael, Cuevas Rodríguez, Juan Carlos, Pérez Pérez, Rubén, Zotti, Linda Ángela
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2019
País:España
Institución:Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Repositorio:Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/690900
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10486/690900
https://dx.doi.org/10.3390/biom9090506
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Azurin
Biomolecular electronics
Density functional theory
Electronic transport
Molecular dynamics
Solid-state junction
Física
Descripción
Sumario:Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Protein-based electronics is an emerging field which has attracted considerable attention over the past decade. Here, we present a theoretical study of the formation and electronic structure of a metal-protein-metal junction based on the blue-copper azurin from pseudomonas aeruginosa. We focus on the case in which the protein is adsorbed on a gold surface and is contacted, at the opposite side, to an STM (Scanning Tunneling Microscopy) tip by spontaneous attachment. This has been simulated through a combination of molecular dynamics and density functional theory. We find that the attachment to the tip induces structural changes in the protein which, however, do not affect the overall electronic properties of the protein. Indeed, only changes in certain residues are observed, whereas the electronic structure of the Cu-centered complex remains unaltered, as does the total density of states of the whole protein