Selective J‐resolved‐HMQC‐1 and ‐2, new methods for measuring proton–proton coupling constants in strongly coupled spin systems

Efficient pulse sequences for measuring ¹H–¹H coupling constants (J_HH) in strongly coupled spin systems, named selective J‐resolved‐HMQC‐1 and ‐2, have been developed. In the strongly coupled spin systems such as ‐CH₂‐CH_A(OH)‐CH_B(OH)‐CH₂‐, measurements of ³J_HAHB are generally difficult owing to the complicated splitting caused by the adjacent CH₂ protons. For easier and accurate measurements of ³J_HAHB in such a spin system, a selective excitation pulse is incorporated into the J‐resolved HMQC pulse sequence. In the proposed methods, only two strongly coupled protons, H_A and H_B which are excited by a selective pulse, are observed as J‐resolved HMQC signals. The cross peaks of H_A and H_B appear as doublets owing to ³J_HAHB along the F₁ dimension in the selective J‐resolved HMQC‐1 and ‐2 experiments. The efficiency of the proposed pulse sequences has been demonstrated in application to the stereochemical studies of the complicated natural product, monazomycin. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Synthesis of a variety of star‐shaped polybenzamides via chain‐growth condensation polymerization with tetrafunctional porphyrin initiator

A variety of well‐defined tetra‐armed star‐shaped poly(N‐substituted p‐benzamide)s, including block poly(p‐benzamide)s with different N‐substituents, and poly(N‐substituted m‐benzamide)s, were synthesized by using porphyrin‐cored tetra‐functional initiator 2 under optimized polymerization conditions. The initiator 2 allowed discrimination of the target star polymer from concomitantly formed linear polymer by‐products by means of GPC with UV detection, and the polymerization conditions were easily optimized for selective synthesis of the star polybenzamides. Star‐shaped poly(p‐benzamide) with tri(ethylene glycol) monomethyl ether (TEG) side chain was selectively obtained by polymerization of phenyl 4‐{2‐[2‐(2‐methoxyethoxy)ethoxy]ethylamino}benzoate ( 1b ′) with 2 at ?10 °C in the case of [ 1b ′]₀/[ 2 ]₀ = 40 and at 0 °C in the case of [ 1b ′]₀/[ 2 ]₀ = 80. Star‐shaped poly(p‐benzamide) with 4‐(octyloxy)benzyl (OOB) substituent was obtained only when methyl 4‐[4‐(octyloxy)benzylamino]benzoate ( 1c ) was polymerized at 25 °C at [ 1c ]₀/[ 2 ]₀ = 20. On the other hand, star‐shaped poly(m‐benzamide)s with N‐butyl, N‐octyl, and N‐TEG side chains were able to be synthesized by polymerization of the corresponding meta‐substituted aminobenzoic acid alkyl ester monomers 3 at 0 °C until the ratio of [ 3 ]₀/[ 2 ]₀ reached 80. However, star‐shaped poly(m‐benzamide)s with the OOB group were contaminated with linear polymer even when the feed ratio of the monomer 3d to 2 was 20. The UV–visible spectrum of an aqueous solution of star‐shaped poly(p‐benzamide) with TEG side chain indicated that the hydrophobic porphyrin core was aggregated. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem, 2011     

Antigen�Cantibody interactions of influenza virus hemagglutinin revealed by the fragment molecular orbital calculation

Effective interactions between amino acid residues in antigen?Cantibody complex of influenza virus hemagglutinin (HA) protein can be evaluated in terms of the inter-fragment interaction energy (IFIE) analysis with the fragment molecular orbital (FMO) method, in which each fragment contains the side chain of corresponding amino acid residue. We have carried out the FMO-MP2 (second-order Moeller?CPlesset) calculation for the complex of HA antigen and Fab antibody of influenza virus H3N2 A/Aichi/2/68 and obtained the IFIE values between each amino acid residue in HA and the whole antibody as the sums over the residues contained in the latter. Combining this IFIE data with experimental data for hemadsorption activity of HA mutants, we succeeded in theoretically explaining the mutations in HA observed after the emergence of influenza virus H3N2 A/Aichi/2/68 in an earlier study, except for those of THR83. In the present study, we employ an alternative way of fragment division in the FMO calculation at the carbonyl C site of the peptide bond instead of the C_?? site used in the previous work, which provides revised IFIE values consistent with all the historical mutation data in the antigenic region E of HA including the case of THR83 in the present prediction scheme for probable mutations in HA.     

Synthesis and determination of the relative structure of akaterpin, a potent inhibitor of PI-PLC

We describe the first total synthesis and structural determination of akaterpin, an inhibitor of phosphatidylinositol-specific phospholipase C (PI-PLC). The key features of the synthetic strategy include a regio- and stereoselective C-alkylation at the angular C1′ position and an exo-selective intermolecular Diels-Alder reaction. The relative stereochemistry was determined by a comparison of the NMR spectra of synthetic akaterpin with those of natural akaterpin.     

Self-stability of a simple walking model driven by a rhythmic signal

In this paper, we analyzed the dynamic properties of a simple walking model of a biped robot driven by a rhythmic signal from an oscillator. The oscillator receives no sensory feedback and the rhythmic signal is an open loop. The simple model consists of a hip and two legs that are connected at the hip. The leg motion is generated by a rhythmic signal. In particular, we analytically examined the stability of a periodic walking motion. We obtained approximate periodic solutions and the Jacobian matrix of a Poincaré map by the power-series expansion using a small parameter. Although the analysis was inconclusive when we used only the first order expansion, by employing the second order expansion it clarified the stability, revealing that the periodic walking motion is asymptotically stable and the simple model possesses self-stability as an inherent dynamic characteristic in walking. We also clarified the stability region with respect to model parameters such as mass ratio and walking speed.     

Color speckle

Speckle is a random distribution of a radiant power density or an irradiance on the observation plane (retina of observers in the laser display) due to the interference of randomly phase-modulated wavefronts. Since a color is synthesized by the superposition of red-green-blue (RGB) primary-color lasers in laser displays, if the speckle patterns of RGB lasers are uncorrelated with each other, then the fluctuation in radiant power density results in a change in color received by the observer. We name this random distribution of color “color speckle”. The distribution of color on the xy chromaticity diagram is investigated for speckle patterns of various speckle contrasts. We demonstrate a numerical simulation of color speckle. Then, we derive the theoretical expressions of the variance and covariance of the distribution of xy chromaticity under the assumption of low speckle contrast.     

Laser electron acceleration beyond 100 GeV

Nowadays there is great progress on laser-driven plasma-based accelerators by exploiting petawatt-class lasers, where for one aspect electron beams can be accelerated to multi-GeV energy in a centimeter-scale plasma due to laser wakefield acceleration mechanism. While to date, worldwide researches on laser-plasma accelerators are focused to create compact particle and radiation sources for applications in a wide range of sciences, including basic, medical and industrial sciences, there are great interests in applications for high energy physics and astrophysics that explore unprecedented high-energy frontier phenomena, for which laser plasma accelerator concepts provide us with promising tools. Here, our endeavors toward “extreme light” in the IZEST are envisaged for the next 30 years perspective and issues on laser plasma electron acceleration beyond 100 GeV and furthermore toward the TeV regime, aiming at high energy physics applications.     

Fully analytic energy gradient in the fragment molecular orbital method

The Z-vector equations are derived and implemented for solving the response term due to the external electrostatic potentials, and the corresponding contribution is added to the energy gradients in the framework of the fragment molecular orbital (FMO) method. To practically solve the equations for large molecules like proteins, the equations are decoupled by taking advantage of the local nature of fragments in the FMO method and establishing the self-consistent Z-vector method. The resulting gradients are compared with numerical gradients for the test molecular systems: (H(2)O)(64), alanine decamer, hydrated chignolin with the protein data bank (PDB) ID of 1UAO, and a Trp-cage miniprotein construct (PDB ID: 1L2Y). The computation time for calculating the response contribution is comparable to or less than that of the FMO self-consistent charge calculation. It is also shown that the energy gradients for the electrostatic dimer approximation are fully analytic, which significantly reduces the computational costs. The fully analytic FMO gradient is parallelized with an efficiency of about 98% on 32 nodes.