Ab initio molecular dynamics study of the keto-enol tautomerism of acetone in solution.

We have studied the keto-enol interconversion of acetone to understand the mechanism of tautomerism relevant to numerous organic and biochemical processes. Applying the ab initio metadynamics method, we simulated the keto-enol isomerism both in the gas phase and in the presence of water. For the gas-phase intramolecular mechanism we show that no other hydrogen-transfer reactions can compete with the simple keto-enol tautomerism. We obtain an intermolecular mechanism and remarkable participation of water when acetone is solvated by neutral water. The simulations reveal that C deprotonation is the kinetic bottleneck of the keto-enol transformation, in agreement with experimental observations. The most interesting finding is the formation of short H-bonded chains of water molecules that provide the route for proton transfer from the carbon to the oxygen atom of acetone. The mechanistic picture that emerged from the present study involves proton migration and emphasizes the importance of active solvent participation in tautomeric interconversion.     

Characterization of phenolic acids and flavonoids in dandelion (Taraxacum officinale WEB. ex WIGG.) root and herb by high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization mass spectrometry

Phenolic acids and flavonoids were extracted from a dandelion (Taraxacum officinale WEB. ex WIGG.) root and herb juice and characterized by high-performance liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. Among the 43 compounds detected, 5 mono- and dicaffeoylquinic acids, 5 tartaric acid derivatives, 8 flavone and 8 flavonol glycosides were characterized based on their UV spectra and their fragmentation patterns in collision-induced dissociation experiments. The predominant compound was chicoric acid (dicaffeoyltartaric acid). Furthermore, several caffeoylquinic acid isomers were distinguished in dandelion extracts for the first time by their specific mass spectral data. The present study reveals that even more quercetin glycosides were found in dandelion than hitherto assumed. The occurrence of di- and triglycosylated flavonoids in particular has not yet been described. This paper marks the first report on HPLC-DAD/ESI-MSn investigations of phenolic compounds in dandelion.     

Europium(III) and its halides in anhydrous room-temperature imidazolium-based ionic liquids: a combined TRES, EXAFS, and molecular dynamics study

Combining spectroscopic techniques (TRES and EXAFS) and molecular dynamics simulations, we have investigated the state of trivalent europium dissolved in room-temperature ionic liquids (RTILs), as a function of the RTIL anion and in the presence of added chloride anions. The studied RTILs are based on the 1-butyl-3-methyl-imidazolium (Bumim+) cation and differ by their anionic counterparts: BF4-, PF6-, Tf- (triflate, CF3SO3-), and Tf2N- [(CF3SO2)2N-]. The results show the strong influence of the RTIL nature on the first solvation shell of europium and on its complexation with chloride. Depending on the RTIL, europium(III), which was introduced in solution as a triflate salt, is found to be solvated either by RTIL anions only or as neutral undissociated EuTf3 moieties completed by solvent anions. Kinetic effects, related to the viscosity of the RTIL and the nature of the europium salt, also markedly influence the coordination of added Cl- or F- anions to the metal.     

Bioinformatical evaluation of modified nucleosides as biomedical markers in diagnosis of breast cancer

It is known that patients suffering from cancer diseases excrete increased amounts of modified nucleosides with their urine. Especially methylated nucleosides have been proposed to be potential tumor markers for early diagnosis of cancer. For determination of nucleosides in randomly collected urine samples, the nucleosides were extracted using affinity chromatography and then analyzed via reversed phase high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with UV-detection. Eleven nucleosides were quantified in urine samples from 51 breast cancer patients and 65 healthy women.The measured concentrations were used to train a Support Vector Machine (SVM) and a k-nearest-neighbor classifier (k-NN) to discriminate between healthy control subjects and patients suffering from breast cancer. Evaluations of the learned models by computing the leave-one-out error and the prediction error on an independent test set of 29 subjects (15 healthy, 14 breast cancer patients) showed that by using the eleven nucleosides, the occurrence of breast cancer could be forecasted with 86% specificity and 94% sensitivity when using an SVM and 86% for both specificity and sensitivity with the k-NN model.     

First generation and trapping of a dehydrometallophthalocyanine starting from triazole-functionalized zinc phthalocyanine

Direct 1N-amination of the triazole-fused zinc phthalocyanine 2 and oxidation of the formed amino derivative 3 resulted in the generation of the very reactive intermediate, the dehydrometallophthalocyanine 4, which was not known previously. The latter was trapped in situ with different dienes, for example, furan, tetraphenylcyclopentadienone, and anthracene to form the corresponding Diels-Alder adducts. The products were characterized by 1H and 13C-dept135 NMR, and UV/Vis spectroscopy, MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, and elemental analysis, which are fully in agreement with their structure. The developed synthetic procedure opens a simple and versatile pathway towards unsymmetrical peripheral modification of phthalocyanines, which is readily applicable to the micromol scale and is important for the design of new interesting Pc-based systems.     

Analyse à deux échelles d'une suite bornée de L2 sur une sous-variété du cotangent

In this Note, we investigate the generalization of two-scale Wigner measure to the case of submanifolds more general than symplectic and involutive ones for which they have been defined. We study the concentration of a bounded family in $L^2({\mathbb{R}}^d)$ on a submanifold of the cotangent space $T^1{\mathbb{R}}^d$ for which the restriction of the symplectic form to its tangent space is of constant rank. To cite this article: C. Fermanian Kammerer, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris, Ser. I 340 (2005).     

New Ionic Liquid Based on the CMPO Pattern for the Sequential Extraction of U(VI), Am(III) and Eu(III)

Extraction of U(VI), Eu(III) and Am(III) has been performed from acidic aqueous solutions (HNO₃, HClO₄) into the ionic liquid [C₄mim][Tf₂N] in which a new extracting task-specific ionic liquid, based on the CMPO unit {namely 1-[3-[2-(octylphenylphosphoryl)acetamido]propyl]-3-methyl-1H-imidazol-3-ium bis(trifluoromethane)sulfonamide, hereafter noted OctPh-CMPO-IL}, was dissolved at low concentration (0.01 mol·L^?1). EXAFS and UV–Vis spectroscopy measurements were performed to characterize the extracted species. The extraction of U(VI) is more efficient than the extraction of trivalent Am and Eu using this TSIL, for both acids and their concentration range. We obtained evidence that the metal ions are extracted as a solvate (UO₂(OctPh-CMPO-IL)₃) by a cation exchange mechanism. Nitrate or perchlorate ions do not play a direct role in the extraction by being part of the extracted complexes, but the replacement of nitric acid for perchloric acid entails a drop in the selectivity between U and Eu. However, our TSIL allows a sequential separation of U(VI) and Eu/Am(III) using the same HNO₃ concentration and same nature of the organic phase, just by changing the ligand concentration.     

Décomposition spectrale dans des algèbres munies d'un star-produit

Summary The purpose of this paper is to study, in intrinsic way, the Moyal's product, defined in the flat space R ²ⁿ. This product is defined here with the twisted convolution and the Fourier transform. The S(R ²ⁿ) and L²(R ²ⁿ) spaces are_*5-algebras. Because of this definition, the_*V-product of some tempered distributions is defined. Let O _M ^v be the set of multiplication operators in S(R ²ⁿ). By transposition, the S(R ²ⁿ) space is a right-module on O _M ^v . The support of f_*v g is different from the support of f·g; under large enough hypotheses, there is a Taylor's formula for the star-product function of the v variable. The ^v space of the multiplication operators in L²(R ²ⁿ) is defined here as the space of tempered distributions, the image of which is the set of bounded operators in L²(R ²ⁿ) by the Weyl map. After the study of ^v space, it is possible to show the spectral resolution of the real elements of ^v or of O _M ^v , which satisfies a, probably superfluous, hypothesis.