Local Structures and Chemical Properties of Deprotonated Arginine

The potential energy surface of gaseous deprotonated arginine has been systematically in- vestigated by first principles calculations. At the B3LYP/6-31G(d) level, apart from the identification of several stable local structures, a new global minimum is located which is about 6.56 kJ/mol more stable than what has been reported. The deprotonated arginine molecule has two distinct forms with the deprotonation at the carboxylate group (COO^-). These two forms are bridged by a very high energy barrier and possess very different IR spectral profiles. Our calculated proton dissociation energy and gas-phase acidity of argi-nine molecule are found to be in good agreement with the corresponding experimental results. The predicted geometries, dipole moments, rotational constants, vertical ionization energies and IR spectra of low energy conformers will be useful for future experimental measurements.