Interference of flavonoids with enzymatic assays for the determination of free fatty acid and triglyceride levels

Flavonoids are bioactive food compounds with potential lipid-lowering effects. Commercially available enzymatic assays are widely used to determine free fatty acid (FFA) and triglyceride (TG) levels both in vivo in plasma or serum and in vitro in cell culture medium or cell lysate. However, we have observed that various flavonoids interfere with peroxidases used in these enzymatic assays, resulting in incorrect lower FFA and TG levels than actually present. Furthermore, addition of isorhamnetin or the major metabolite of the flavonoid quercetin in human and rat plasma, quercetin-3-O-glucuronide, to murine serum also resulted in a significant reduction of the detected TG levels, while a trend was seen for FFA levels. It is concluded that when applying these assays, vigilance is needed and alternative analytical methods, directly assessing FFA or TG levels, should be used for studying the biological effects of flavonoids on FFA and TG levels.     

Unified Green's function retrieval by cross correlation

It has been shown by many authors that the cross correlation of two recordings of a diffuse wave field at different receivers yields the Green's function between these receivers. Recently the theory has been extended for situations where time-reversal invariance does not hold (e.g., in attenuating media) and where source-receiver reciprocity breaks down (in moving fluids). Here we present a unified theory for Green's function retrieval that captures all these situations and, because of the unified form, readily extends to more complex situations, such as electrokinetic Green's function retrieval in poroelastic or piezoelectric media. The unified theory has a wide range of applications in "remote sensing without a source."     

An analysis of nonlocal density functionals in chemical bonding

In this work, we carry out an analysis of the gradient-corrected density functionals in molecules that are used in the Kohn–Sham density functional approach. We concentrate on the special features of the exchange and correlation energy densities and exchange and correlation potentials in the bond region. By comparing to the exact Kohn–Sham potential, it is shown that the gradient-corrected potentials build in the required peak in the bond midplane, but not completely correctly. The gradient-corrected potentials also exhibit wrong asymptotic behavior. Contributions from different regions of space (notably bond and outer regions) to nonlocal bonding energy contributions are investigated by integrating the exchange and correlation energy densities in various spatial regions. This provides an explanation of why the gradient corrections reduce the local density approximation (LDA ) overbinding of molecules. It explains the success of the presently used nonlocal corrections, although it is possible that there is a cancellation of errors, too much repulsion being derived from the bond region and too little from the outer region. © John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Vibronic structure of the permanganate absorption spectrum from time-dependent density functional calculations

The UV absorption spectrum of the permanganate anion is a prototype transition-metal complex spectrum. Despite this being a simple d0 Td system, for which a beautiful spectrum with detailed vibrational structure has been available since 1967, the assignment of the second and third bands is still very controversial. The issue can be resolved only by an elucidation of the intricate vibronic structure of the spectrum. We investigate the vibronic coupling by means of linear-response time-dependent density functional calculations. By means of a diabatizing scheme that employs the transition densities obtained in the TDDFT calculations in many geometries around Re, we construct a Taylor series expansion in the normal coordinates of a diabatic potential energy matrix, coupling 24 excited states. The simulated vibronic structure is in good agreement with the experimental absorption spectrum after the adjustment of some of the calculated vertical excitation energies. The peculiar blurred vibronic structure of the second band, which is a very distinctive feature of the experimental spectrum, is fully reproduced in the calculations. It is caused by the double-well shape of the adiabatic energy surface along the Jahn-Teller active e mode of the allowed 1E state arising from the second 1T2 state, which exhibits a Jahn-Teller splitting into 1B2 and 1E states. We trace the double-well shape to an avoided crossing between two diabatic states with different orbital-excitation character. The crossing can be explained at the molecular orbital level from the Jahn-Teller splitting of the set of 7t2{3d(xy), 3d(xz), 3d(yz)} orbitals (the LUMO + 1), to which the excitations characterizing the diabatic states take place. In contrast to its character in the two well regions, at Re the 2(1)T2 state is not predominantly an excitation to the LUMO + 1, but has more HOMO - 1 --> LUMO (2e = {3d(x2-y2), 3d(z2)}) character. The changing character of the 2(1)T2 - 1E state along the e mode implies that the assignment of the experimental bands to single orbital transitions is too simplistic intrinsically. This spectrum, and notably the blurring of the vibronic structure in the second band, can be understood only from the extensive configurational mixing and vibronic coupling between the excited states. This solves the long-standing assignment problem of these bands.     

Calculation of the A term of magnetic circular dichroism based on time dependent-density functional theory I. Formulation and implementation

A procedure for calculating the A term and the A/D ratio of magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) within time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) is described. Utilizing an implementation of the MCD theory within the Amsterdam Density Functional program, the A term contributions to the MCD spectra of MnO(4) (-), CrO(4) (2-), VO(4) (3-), MoO(4) (2-), VO(4) (3-), MoS(4) (2-), Se(4) (2+), Te(4) (2+), Fe(CN)(6) (4-), Ni(CN)(4) (2-), trichlorobenzene, hexachlorobenzene, tribromobenzene, and hexabromobenzene are calculated. For the most part, agreement between theory and experiment for A/D ratios and the relative magnitude of A terms is found to be good, leading to simulated spectra that are similar in appearance to those derived from measurements. The A terms are found to be too small whenever comparison with experiment was possible, probably due to the neglect of environment effects on the incident radiation and the relative low accuracy of dipole strengths calculated within TD-DFT.     

Photophysics of octabutoxy phthalocyaninato-Ni(II) in toluene: ultrafast experiments and DFT/TDDFT studies

Reported herein is a combination of experimental and DFT/TDDFT theoretical investigations of the ground and excited states of 1,4,8,11,15,18,22,25-Octabutoxyphthalocyaninato-nickel(II), NiPc(BuO)(8), and the dynamics of its deactivation after excitation into the S(1)(pi,pi) state in toluene solution. According to X-ray crystallographic analysis NiPc(BuO)(8) has a highly saddled structure in the solid state. However, DFT studies suggest that in solution the complex is likely to flap from one D(2)(d)-saddled conformation to the opposite one through a D(4)(h)-planar structure. The spectral and kinetic changes for the complex in toluene are understood in terms of the 730 nm excitation light generating a primarily excited S(1) (pi,pi) state that transforms initially into a vibrationally hot (3)(d(z)2,d(x)2(-)(y)2) state. Cooling to the zeroth state is complete after ca. 8 ps. The cold (d,d) state converted to its daughter state, the (3)LMCT (pi,d(x)2(-)(y)2), which itself decays to the ground state with a lifetime of 640 ps. The proposed deactivation mechanism applies to the D(2)(d)-saddled and the D(4)(h)-planar structure as well. The results presented here for NiPc(BuO)(8) suggest that in nickel phthalocyanines the (1,3)LMCT (pi,d(x)2(-)(y)2) states may provide effective routes for radiationless deactivation of the (1,3)(pi,pi) states.     

X-ray Absorption Spectroscopic Investigation of Arsenite and Arsenate Adsorption at the Aluminum Oxide-Water Interface

We investigated the As(III) and As(V) adsorption complexes forming at the gamma-Al(2)O(3)/water interface as a function of pH and ionic strength (I), using a combination of adsorption envelopes, electrophoretic mobility (EM) measurements, and X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS). The As adsorption envelopes show that (1) As(III) adsorption increases with increasing pH and is insensitive to I changes (0.01 and 0.8 M NaNO(3)) at pH 3-4.5, while adsorption decreases with increasing I between pH 4.5 and 9.0, and (2) As(V) adsorption decreases with increasing pH and is insensitive to I changes at pH 3.5-10. The EM measurements show that As(III) adsorption does not significantly change the EM values of gamma-Al(2)O(3) suspension in 0.1 M NaNO(3) at pH 4-8, whereas As(V) adsorption lowered the EM values at pH 4-10. The EXAFS data indicate that both As(III) and As(V) form inner-sphere complexes with a bidentate binuclear configuration, as evidenced by a As(III)-Al bond distance of congruent with3.22 ? and a As(V)-Al bond distance of congruent with3.11 ?. The As(III) XANES spectra, however, show that outer-sphere complexes are formed in addition to inner-sphere complexes and that the importance of outer-sphere As(III) complexes increases with increasing pH (5.5 to 8) and with decreasing I. In short, the data indicate for As(III) that inner- and outer-sphere adsorption coexist whereas for As(V) inner-sphere complexes are predominant under our experimental conditions. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.     

The merits of the frozen-density embedding scheme to model solvatochromic shifts

We investigate the usefulness of a frozen-density embedding scheme within density-functional theory [J. Phys. Chem. 97, 8050 (1993)] for the calculation of solvatochromic shifts. The frozen-density calculations, particularly of excitation energies have two clear advantages over the standard supermolecule calculations: (i) calculations for much larger systems are feasible, since the time-consuming time-dependent density functional theory (TDDFT) part is carried out in a limited molecular orbital space, while the effect of the surroundings is still included at a quantum mechanical level. This allows a large number of solvent molecules to be included and thus affords both specific and nonspecific solvent effects to be modeled. (ii) Only excitations of the system of interest, i.e., the selected embedded system, are calculated. This allows an easy analysis and interpretation of the results. In TDDFT calculations, it avoids unphysical results introduced by spurious mixings with the artificially too low charge-transfer excitations which are an artifact of the adiabatic local-density approximation or generalized gradient approximation exchange-correlation kernels currently used. The performance of the frozen-density embedding method is tested for the well-studied solvatochromic properties of the n-->pi(*) excitation of acetone. Further enhancement of the efficiency is studied by constructing approximate solvent densities, e.g., from a superposition of densities of individual solvent molecules. This is demonstrated for systems with up to 802 atoms. To obtain a realistic modeling of the absorption spectra of solvated molecules, including the effect of the solvent motions, we combine the embedding scheme with classical molecular dynamics (MD) and Car-Parrinello MD simulations to obtain snapshots of the solute and its solvent environment, for which then excitation energies are calculated. The frozen-density embedding yields estimated solvent shifts in the range of 0.20-0.26 eV, in good agreement with experimental values of between 0.19 and 0.21 eV.     

Steric and electronic effects on the reactivity of rh and ir complexes containing P-S,P-P,and P-O ligands. Implications for the effects of chelate ligands in catalysis

Kinetic studies of the reactions of [M(CO)(L-L)I] [M = Rh, Ir; L-L = Ph(2)PCH(2)P(S)Ph(2) (dppms), Ph(2)PCH(2)CH(2)PPh(2) (dppe), and Ph(2)PCH(2)P(O)Ph(2) (dppmo)] with methyl iodide have been undertaken. All the chelate ligands promote oxidative addition of methyl iodide to the square planar M(I) centers, by factors of between 30 and 50 compared to the respective [M(CO)(2)I(2)](-) complexes, due to their good donor properties. Migratory CO insertion in [Rh(CO)(L-L)I(2)Me] leads to acetyl complexes [Rh(L-L)I(2)(COMe)] for which X-ray crystal structures were obtained for L-L = dppms (3a) and dppe (3b). Against the expectations of simple bonding arguments, methyl migration is faster by a factor of ca. 1500 for [Rh(CO)(dppms)I(2)Me] (2a) than for [Rh(CO)(dppe)I(2)Me] (2b). For M = Ir, alkyl iodide oxidative addition gives stable alkyl complexes [Ir(CO)(L-L)I(2)R]. Migratory insertion (induced at high temperature by CO pressure) was faster for [Ir(CO)(dppms)I(2)Me] (5a) than for its dppe analogue (5b). Reaction of methyl triflate with [Ir(CO)(dppms)I] (4a) yielded the dimer [[Ir(CO)(dppms)(mu-I)Me](2)](2+) (7), which was characterized crystallographically along with 5a and [Ir(CO)(dppms)I(2)Et] (6). Analysis of the X-ray crystal structures showed that the dppms ligand adopts a conformation which creates a sterically crowded pocket around the alkyl ligands of 5a, 6, and 7. It is proposed that this steric strain can be relieved by migratory insertion, to give a five-coordinate acetyl product in which the sterically crowded quadrants flank a vacant coordination site, exemplified by the crystal structure of 3a. Conformational analysis indicates similarity between M(dppms) and M(2)(mu-dppm) chelate structures, which have less flexibility than M(dppe) systems and therefore generate greater steric strain with the "axial" ligands in octahedral complexes. Ab initio calculations suggest an additional electronic contribution to the migratory insertion barrier, whereby a sulfur atom trans to CO stabilizes the transition state compared to systems with phosphorus trans to CO. The results represent a rare example of the quantification of ligand effects on individual steps from catalytic cycles, and are discussed in the context of catalytic methanol carbonylation. Implications for other catalytic reactions utilizing chelating diphosphines (e.g., CO/alkene copolymerization and alkene hydroformylation) are considered.