A Three‐Site Mechanism for Agonist/Antagonist Selective Binding to Vasopressin Receptors

Molecular‐dynamics simulations with metadynamics enhanced sampling reveal three distinct binding sites for arginine vasopressin (AVP) within its V₂‐receptor (V₂R). Two of these, the vestibule and intermediate sites, block (antagonize) the receptor, and the third is the orthosteric activation (agonist) site. The contacts found for the orthosteric site satisfy all the requirements deduced from mutagenesis experiments. Metadynamics simulations for V₂R and its V_1aR‐analog give an excellent correlation with experimental binding free energies by assuming that the most stable binding site in the simulations corresponds to the experimental binding free energy in each case. The resulting three‐site mechanism separates agonists from antagonists and explains subtype selectivity.     

Untersuchung von Wasser

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

A general complex variable boundary element method

The solution to any 2‐dimensional potential problem, with continuous data given on the boundary of a bounded domain with connected complement, can be approximated by sums Re Σ c_n f(α_n z + z₀), where f is any preassigned non‐polynomial analytic function. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 17:332–335, 2001     

Metalations utilizing aryllithiums; ortho-functionalization of p-bromoanisole (pBrA)

An ortho-metalation protocol has been developed, which permits the survival of a bromine substituent in p-bromoanisole. Eight derivatives of the generated ortho-lithiated intermediate have been prepared. A neglected metalation concept is being explored here; one which proposes that minimizing the pK_a difference between the aryl substrate and the conjugate acid of the metalating agent will lead to a regiospecific and selective metalation process.     

Molecular Dynamics Simulations of Warm Dense Carbon

We present classical and DFT‐based molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of carbon in the warm dense matter regime (? = 3.7 g/cc, 0.86 eV < T < 8.62 eV [T < 100 eV for classical MD]). Two different classical interatomic potentials are used: 1. LCBOP, designed to simulate condensed (e.g. solid) phases of C, and 2. linearly screened Coulomb (Yukawa) potentials. It is shown that LCBOP over‐predicts minima and maxima in the pair correlation functions of liquid‐C in this regime when compared to the DFT‐MD results. The screened Coulomb model, while under‐correlating at low‐T, seems to produce the correct qualitative features in the static ionic pair distributions at the highest‐T. However, both approaches predict the decay in the ionic contribution of the specific heat as T → ∞ to be much slower than that predicted by a model based on DFT‐MD. These differences in the MD‐derived equations of state in warm dense regimes could have important consequences when using classical inter‐ionic forces such as these in large‐scale MD simulations aimed at studying, for instance, processes of relevance to inertial confinement fusion when C is used as an ablator material. (© 2015 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Evaluation of the sensitivity of the ‘Wiley registry of tandem mass spectral data,MSforID’ with MS/MS data of the ‘NIST/NIH/EPA mass spectral library’

Tandem mass spectral libraries are versatile tools for small molecular identification finding application in forensic science, doping control, drug monitoring, food and environmental analysis, as well as metabolomics. Two important libraries are the ‘Wiley Registry of Tandem Mass Spectral Data, MSforID’ (Wiley Registry MSMS) and the collection of MS/MS spectra part of the 2011 edition of the ‘NIST/NIH/EPA Mass Spectral Library’ (NIST 11 MSMS). Herein, the sensitivity and robustness of the Wiley Registry MSMS were evaluated using spectra extracted from the NIST 11 MSMS library. The sample set was found to be heterogeneous in terms of mass spectral resolution, type of CID, as well as applied collision energies. Nevertheless, sensitive compound identification with a true positive identification rate ≥95% was possible using either the MSforID Search program or the NIST MS Search program 2.0g for matching. To rate the performance of the Wiley Registry MSMS, cross‐validation experiments were repeated using subcollections of NIST 11 MSMS as reference library and spectra extracted from the Wiley Registry MSMS as positive controls. Unexpectedly, with both search algorithms tested, correct results were obtained in less than 88% of cases. We examined possible causes for the results of the cross validation study. The large number of precursor ions represented by a single tandem mass spectrum only was identified as the basic cause for the comparably lower sensitivity of the NIST library. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.