Excited-State Structural Dynamics of Nucleic Acids and Their Components. In: Shukla MK, Leszczynski J, editors. Radiation Induced Molecular Phenomena in Nucleic Acids. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands; 2008. pp. 237-63. [DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4020-8184-2_9]

A molecular insight into the photophysics of barbituric acid, a candidate for canonical nucleobases' ancestor

This work investigates the photophysics of barbituric acid at different pH conditions using ab initio methods. Our calculations ascribe the most intense bands at ca. 260 nm at neutral pH and 210 nm at acidic pH conditions in the absorption spectra of this chromophore to the lowest lying ππ* transitions. Consistently with the ultrashort excited state lifetimes experimentally registered, the potential energy landscapes of both the neutral and deprotonated forms of barbituric acid combined with the interpretation of their transient absorption spectra suggest the deactivation of these systems along the singlet manifold. Compared to uracil, its closest natural nucleobase, barbituric acid presents a red shifted absorption spectrum, due to the lowering by more than 0.5 eV of the lowest-energy ππ* excited state, and a much more complex topography of the S₁ potential energy surface, with several energetically accessible local minima. This fact, however, does not affect the excited state lifetimes, which for barbituric acid were experimentally registered in the sub-ps time scale.

Multiconfigurational Effects in Theoretical Resonance Raman Spectra

We analyze resonance Raman spectra of the nucleobase uracil in the short‐time approximation calculated with multiconfigurational methods. We discuss the importance of static electron correlation by means of density‐matrix renormalization group self‐consistent field (DMRG‐SCF) calculations. Our DMRG‐SCF results reveal that a minimal active orbital space that leads to a qualitatively correct description of the resonance Raman spectrum of uracil should encompass parts of the σ/σ* bonding/anti‐bonding orbitals of the pyrimidine ring. We trace these findings back to the considerable entanglement between the σ/σ* bonding/anti‐bonding as well as valence π/π* orbitals in the excited‐state electronic structure of uracil, which indicates non‐negligible non‐dynamical correlation effects that are less pronounced in the electronic ground state.