Tautomerism in neutral histidine.

Histidine is an important natural amino acid, involved in many relevant biological processes, which, because of its physical properties, proved difficult to characterize experimentally in its neutral form. In this work, neutral histidine has been generated in the gas phase by laser ablation of solid samples and its N(ε)H tautomeric form unraveled through its rotational spectrum. The quadrupole hyperfine structure, arising from the existing three (14)N nuclei, constituted a site-specifically probe for revealing the tautomeric form as well as the side chain configuration of this proteogenic amino acid.