Thermal-induced Unfolding of β-Crystallin and Disassembly of its Oligomers Revealed by Temperature-Jump Time-Resolved Infrared Spectroscopy

β-Crystallins are the major structural proteins existing in the vertebrate lens, and their conformational stability is critical in maintaining the life-long transparency and refraction index of the lens. Seven subunits of β-crystallins naturally assemble into various heteroge- neous oligomers with different sizes. Here, we systematically investigated the thermal sta- bility of the different secondary structures present in β-Crystallins and then the dynamic process for the thermal-induced unfolding of β-crystallins by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy-monitored thermal titration and temperature-jump nanosecond time-resolved IR difference absorbance spectra. Our results show that the N-terminal anti-parallel β-sheets in β-crystallin are the most unstable with a transition midpoint temperature at 36.0-2.1℃, leading to the formation of an intermediate consisting vastly of random coil structures. This intermediate structure is temporally assigned to that of the monomer generated by the thermal-induced disassembly of β-crystallin oligomers with a transition midpoint tempera- ture of 40.4-0.7℃. The global unfolding of β-crystallins that leads to denaturation and aggregation indicated by the formation of intermolecular anti-parallel β-sheets has a transi- tion midpoint temperature determined as 72.4-0.2 ℃. Temperature-jump time-resolved IR absorbance difference spectroscopy analysis further reveals that thermal-induced unfolding of β-crystallins occurs firstly in the anti-parallel β-sheets in the N-terminal domains with a time constant of 50 ns.     

CH3与NO2的反应

The elementary reaction of the CH3 radical with NO2 was investigated by time-resolved FTIR spectroscopy and quantum chemical calculations. The CH3 radical was produced by laser photolysis of CH3Br or CH3I at 248 nm. Vibrationally excited products OH, HNO and CO2 were observed by the time-resolved spectroscopy for the first time. The formation of another product NO was also verified. According to these observations, the product channels leading to CH3O+NO, CH2NO+OH and HNO+H2CO were identified. The channel of CH3O+NO was the major one. The reaction mechanisms of the above channels were studied by quantum chemical calculations at CCSD(T)/6-311++G(df,p)//MP2/6-311G(d,p) level. The calculated results fit with the experimental observations well.     

液晶聚合物材料的红外光谱表征

红外光谱以高选择性、无破坏性以及高超的分辨和实时跟踪能力成为从分子水平研究液晶聚合物的的重要分析手段,而偏振二向色技术、时间分辨步扫描技术和二维相关分析技术的发展进一步提高了红外光谱分析复杂液晶聚合物的能力。本文介绍了传统傅里叶变换红外光谱及各种新型光谱分析技术（主要是二维相关技术）对液晶聚合物材料表征的研究进展,特别是对于液晶聚合物分子氢键、共聚和共混物相容性以及外场（温度、电场、光场、应力场）作用下液晶分子取向等的研究,并分别进行了具体的应用实例分析。