Direct Ultraviolet Laser-Induced Reduction of Disulfide Bonds in Insulin and Vasopressin

Ultraviolet (UV) light has been shown to induce reduction of disulfide bonds in proteins in solution. The photoreduction is proposed to be a result of electron donation from excited Tyr or Trp residues. In this work, a powerful UV femtosecond laser was used to generate photoreduced products, while the hypothesis of Tyr/Trp mediation was studied with spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. With limited irradiation times of 3 min or less at 280 nm, the laser-induced reduction in arginine vasopressin and human insulin led to significant yields of ∼3% stable reduced product. The photogenerated thiols required acidic pH for stabilization, while neutral pH primarily caused scrambling and trisulfide formation. Interestingly, there was no direct evidence that Tyr/Trp mediation was a required criterion for the photoreduction of disulfide bonds. Intermolecular electron transfer remained a possibility for insulin but was ruled out for vasopressin. We propose that an additional mechanism should be increasingly considered in UV light-induced reduction of disulfide bonds in solution, in which a single UV photon is directly absorbed by the disulfide bond.