Search results for " mean square displacement"
showing 4 items of 4 documents
Dynamical properties of myoglobin in an ultraviscous water-glycerol solvent investigated with elastic neutron scattering and FTIR spectroscopy
2018
Abstract Proteins have distinctive dynamical properties, characterized by the fluctuations of protein molecules among the different minima of their energy landscape. These fluctuations, progressively activated for temperature values larger than ~180 K, lead to a steep increase in the temperature dependence of all measurable dynamical properties. This phenomenon is known as Protein Dynamical Transition and, in spite of the intense studies due to its importance in protein function and to the relation with the fascinating fundamental thermodynamics of complex systems, many aspects of it are not yet clearly understood. Among these, the relationship with the properties of the external solvent an…
The protein dynamical transition does not require the protein polypeptide chain
2011
We give experimental evidence that the main features of protein dynamics revealed by neutron scattering, i.e., the “protein dynamical transition” and the “boson peak”, do not need the protein polypeptide chain. We show that a rapid increase of hydrogen atoms fluctuations at about 220 K, analogous to the one observed in hydrated myoglobin powders, is also observed in a hydrated amino acids mixture with the chemical composition of myoglobin but lacking the polypeptide chain; in agreement with the protein behavior, the transition is abolished in the dry mixture. Further, an excess of low-frequency vibrational modes around 3 meV, typically observed in protein powders, is also observed in our mi…
Exploring Cell Biodiversity
2015
Brain tissue is a really complex system composed of different cell types that change in shape and size. A single neuron itself has a cell body, dendrites and an axon. About 80% of cerebral tissue consists of water molecules that are confined (intra and extra cellular) in its disordered biologic networks. Using neutron scattering on IN13 we are able to explore hydrogens (H) dynamics in time scale at about 40 ps and in size scale at about 1 Å. Such characteristic make it suitable to investigate brain tissue heterogeneity exploiting hydrogens as a probe since major constituent of macromolecules and water. Elastic neutron scattering (ENS) gives information about means square displacement (MSDs)…
Supercooled Water Confined in a Silica Xerogel: Temperature and Pressure Dependence of Boson Peak and of Mean Square Displacements
2013
A silica xerogel can be obtained from an alcoxide precursor (TMOS, tetramethylortosilcate) via the sol-gel method: TMOS hydrolysis and subsequent polycondensation yields a solid, disordered, porous SiO2 matrix (average pore dimensions ~20Å). Inside the pores water is trapped and the hydration level h=gr[H2O]/gr[SiO2] can be easily controlled. The presence and temperature dependence of the boson peak (BP) in xerogel confined supercooled water was studied with inelastic neutron scattering (spectrometer IN6 at ILL, Grenoble) in xerogel samples having h=0.4 and h=0.2. After careful subtraction of the contributions arising from the matrix and from quasi-elastic scattering, the BP contribution wa…