Search results for "Conformational isomerism"
showing 10 items of 163 documents
Functional and dysfunctional conformers of human neuroserpin characterized by optical spectroscopies and Molecular Dynamics
2015
Neuroserpin (NS) is a serine protease inhibitor (SERPIN) involved in different neurological pathologies, including the Familial Encephalopathy with Neuroserpin Inclusion Bodies (FENIB), related to the aberrant polymerization of NS mutants. Here we present an in vitro and in silico characterization of native neuroserpin and its dysfunctional conformation isoforms: the proteolytically cleaved conformer, the inactive latent conformer, and the polymeric species. Based on circular dichroism and fluorescence spectroscopy, we present an experimental validation of the latent model and highlight the main structural features of the different conformers. In particular, emission spectra of aromatic res…
Template-Directed Protein Folding into a Metastable State of Increased Activity
1995
The principal objective of this work was to distinguish between kinetic and thermodynamic reaction control in protein folding. The deleterious effects of a specific mutation on spontaneous refolding competence were analyzed for this purpose. A Bowman-Birk-type proteinase inhibitor of trypsin and chymotrypsin was selected as a double-headed model protein to facilitate the detection of functional irregularities by the use of functional assays. The parent protein spontaneously folds into a single, fully active and thermodynamically stable state in a redox buffer after reduction/denaturation. By contrast, the properties of a P'1Ser--Pro variant in the trypsin-reactive subdomain differ before an…
Solution and thermal behaviour of novel dicationic imidazolium ionic liquids
2013
A new class of functionalised dicationic ionic liquids, containing a central cationic unit capped by a basic functionality (imidazole), has been synthesised. These salts have been characterised in isotropic solution using proton and 2D-NMR spectroscopy, and their thermal stability has been studied by DSC and TGA. All these novel salts contain the 1-(1-imidazolylmethyl)-3,5-di{1-(3'-octylimidazolylmethyl)}-benzene cation as a defining structural motif. Salts of both singly and doubly charged anions were prepared and, in particular, the selected monoanions (Br(-), [BF4](-), or [NTf2](-)) differ in size, shape and hydrogen-bonding ability, whereas the dianions differ in the nature of the space…
A theoretical study of solvent effects on the conformational equilibria of neutral glycine in aqueous solution
2003
Abstract In this work conformational equilibrium of neutral glycine in solution is systematically investigated by using DFT and MP2 methods combined with solvent continuum models. A systematic exploration of the potential energy surface and full geometry optimizations for several conformers have been carried out in the gas phase and aqueous solution at the MP2/6-31+G** and B3LYP/6-31+G** levels. Zero-point and thermal contributions to the free energy have been obtained at the B3LYP level. Both theoretical levels lead to very similar results, in geometrical and energetic terms, both in the gas phase and in solution. Solvent effects play an important role on the conformational equilibria of n…
Internal Rotation in Propionic Acid: Near-Infrared-Induced Isomerization in Solid Argon
2005
The conformational system of propionic acid (CH3CH2COOH) is studied in solid argon. It is predicted by the ab initio calculations that this molecule has four stable conformers. These four structures are denoted Tt, Tg+/-, Ct, and Cg+/-, and they differ by the arrangement around the C-O and Calpha-C bonds. The ground-state Tt conformer is the only form present at 8 K after deposition of an argon matrix containing propionic acid. For the CH3CH2COOH and CH3CH2COOD isotopologues, narrow-band excitation of the first hydroxyl stretching overtone of the conformational ground state promotes the Calpha-C and C-O internal rotations producing the Tg+/- and Ct conformers, respectively. A subsequent vib…
Difficulties of density functional theory in predicting the torsional potential of 2,2?-bithiophene
1998
The internal rotation of 2,2′-bithiophene was investigated within the density functional theory (DFT) approach. Fully optimized DFT torsional potentials are compared with Moller–Plesset (MP2) results which predict a fourfold potential with s-cis- and s-trans-gauche minima. DFT calculations fail in describing the energetics of the internal rotation because they favor planar vs. perpendicular conformers. Gradient-corrected functionals provide torsional potentials where the gauche minima have almost vanished and the s-ciss-trans interconversion barriers are twice as high as the barriers obtained at the MP2 level. The use of local functionals augments the shortcomings of the DFT approach. The g…
The Transoid, Ortho, and Gauche Conformers of Decamethyl-n-tetrasilane, n-Si4Me10: Electronic Transitions in the Multistate Complete Active Space Se…
2003
Multistate complete active space second-order perturbation theory (MS-CASPT2) is used to improve earlier descriptions of the low-energy valence excited states of the transoid, ortho, and gauche conformers of decamethyl-n-tetrasilane, n-Si4Me10, using a generally contracted basis set of atomic natural orbitals (ANOs) at a ground-state geometry optimized in the second-order Moller−Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) approximation with Dunning's correlation consistent triple-ζ basis set (cc-pVTZ) on the silicon atoms and the 6-31G* and 6-31G basis sets on the carbon and hydrogen atoms, respectively. Relative energies, relative free energies, and mole fractions of the transoid, ortho, and gauche …
Systematic conformational search analysis of the SRR and RRR epimers of 7-hydroxymatairesinol
2009
An extensive and systematic conformational search was performed on the two epimers of the natural lignan 7-hydroxymatairesinol (HMR), by means of a home-made Systematic Conformational Search Analysis (SCSA) code, designed to select more and more stable conformers through sequential geometry optimization of trial structures at increasing levels of calculation theory. In the present case, the starting molecular structures were selected by the semi-empirical AM1 method and filtered – i.e. decreased in number by choosing the more stable species – on the basis of their energy calculated by the HF method and the 6-31G(d) basis set. The geometries obtained were further refined by performing densit…
Conformational Isomerism in Drug Action: Does the Free Energy of Binding Induce the Pharmacophoric Conformation of Semi-Rigid Muscarinic Agonists?
1974
The physiological neurotransmitter Acetylcholine has been shown to have great molecular flexibility, and because of this, the possibility of forming numerous energetically different conformations. This property makes the determination of the biologically active conformation extremely complicated. In attempts to solve this problem various research groups have tried two basically different approaches: (1) (1) The determination of the energetically most stable conformation using crystallographic methods (X-ray diffraction studies), nuclear magnetic resonance and quantum-mechanical calculations [1–16]. Same workers hypothesized that the energetically most favourable form was also the biological…
Reinvestigation of the Pd-catalysed bis(silylation) of alkynes with 1,1,2,2-tetramethyl-1,2-bis(phenylthiomethyl)disilane: Unexpected formation of th…
2013
International audience; The bis(silylated) alkenes Z-(PhSCH2)Me2SiC(H)=C(Fc)SiMe2(CH2SPh) (2) and Z-(PhSCH2)Me2SiC(H)=C(bipheny)SiMe2(CH2SPh) (3) have been prepared by Pd-catalysed double silylation of ethynylferrocene and 4-ethynyl-1,1'-biphenyl in the presence of 1,1,2,2-tetramethyl-1,2-bis(phenylthiomethyl)disilane (1). A reinvestigation on the interaction of 1 with [PdCl2(PhCN)2] in technical-grade CH2Cl2 as solvent revealed competition between reduction to elemental palladium (due to oxidative addition of the Si-Si bond across Pd(II) and subsequent reductive elimination) and formation of an unusual eight-membered chelate complex cis-[PdCl2{(PhSCH2SiMe2)2O}] (4), which is fluxional in s…