Search results for "Electrostatics"

Protein Flexibility and Preorganization in the Design of Enzymes. The Kemp Elimination Catalyzed by HG3.17

2015

A recently designed enzyme, HG3.17, obtained by directed evolution, has shown a catalytic activity close to natural enzymes. Hybrid QM/MM molecular dynamics simulations for the Kemp elimination in this new enzyme have provided a deep insight into the origin of its catalytic efficiency. In this case, we have first demonstrated the presence of different conformations with significantly different reactivity. The larger reactivity is related with a better electrostatic preorganization of the environment that creates a more favorable electrostatic potential for the reaction to proceed. In HG3.17, efforts to improve the catalytic properties must be focused in possible mutations increasing the pre…

Equilibrium and transport properties of ion-exchange membranes

1984

Abstract Specific properties (ion-exchange capacity, water content, pore volume fraction) and transport properties (counterion transport number and electrical conductivity) have been measured in four commercial cation-exchange membranes loaded with a variety of cations of different nature and charge. Not surprisingly, equivalent conductances are lower than in free solution and transport numbers decrease with valency of the counterion. This behavior is explained by taking into account a “tortuosity factor”, due to a lengthening of the pores across the membrane, except for a membrane with a lower water content and for ions of higher charge, in which electrostatic interactions between mobile a…

Highly Defined, Colloid‐Like Ionic Clusters in Solution

2012

Many societal challenges at the beginning of the 21st century lead to an apparent and growing need for functional materials and novel ways of materials synthesis and assembly. Rising to the challenge, the utilization of small, self-assembling building blocks for the bottom-up construction of new types of polymers and nanostructures has enjoyed increasing popularity among materials researchers in the recent past. Supramolecular materials like foldamers, surface films, nanoparticles, etc. are created by exploiting noncovalent forces [1] leading to an ordered arrangement of nanoscale building blocks. [2] In the search for new polymers based on noncovalent molecular forces, we are motivated by …

Intra-Helical Salt Bridge Contribution to Membrane Protein Insertion.

2021

ABSTRACTSalt bridges between negatively (D, E) and positively charged (K, R, H) amino acids play an important role in protein stabilization. This has a more prevalent effect in membrane proteins where polar amino acids are exposed to a very hydrophobic environment. In transmembrane (TM) helices the presence of charged residues can hinder the insertion of the helices into the membrane. This can sometimes be avoided by TM region rearrangements after insertion, but it is also possible that the formation of salt bridges could decrease the cost of membrane integration. However, the presence of intra-helical salt bridges in TM domains and their effect on insertion has not been properly studied ye…

Generalized synthesis of periodic surfactant/inorganic composite materials

1994

THE recent synthesis of silica-based mesoporous materials1,2 by the cooperative assembly of periodic inorganic and surfactant-based structures has attracted great interest because it extends the range of molecular-sieve materials into the very-large-pore regime. If the synthetic approach can be generalized to transition-metal oxide mesostructures, the resulting nanocomposite materials might find applications in electrochromic or solid-electrolyte devices3,4, as high-surface-area redox catalysts5 and as substrates for biochemical separations. We have proposed recently6 that the matching of charge density at the surfactant/inorganic interfaces governs the assembly process; such co-organizatio…

2020

Biomolecules, and particularly proteins, bind on nanoparticle (NP) surfaces to form the so-called protein corona. It is accepted that the corona drives the biological distribution and toxicity of NPs. Here, the corona composition and structure were studied using silica nanoparticles (SiNPs) of different sizes interacting with soluble yeast protein extracts. Adsorption isotherms showed that the amount of adsorbed proteins varied greatly upon NP size with large NPs having more adsorbed proteins per surface unit. The protein corona composition was studied using a large-scale label-free proteomic approach, combined with statistical and regression analyses. Most of the proteins adsorbed on the N…

Electrostatic phenomena in ion exchange membranes

1971

Abstract Specific and transport properties of a cation and an anion exchange membrane in Na + and Cl - form respectively have been measured in water and dioxane water mixtures. A greater electrolyte absorption and a lesser specific conductivity and counterion transport number in solvents at higher dioxane content indicate strong electrostatic interactions between fixed groups in the membrane and counterions.