A New Nonconjugated Naphthalene Derivative of Meso-tetra-(3-hydroxy)-phenyl-porphyrin as a Potential Sensitizer for Photodynamic Therapy

A new 5,10,15,20-tetra-(phenoxy-3-carbonyl-1-amino-naphthyl)-porphyrin was prepared by an isocyanate condensation reaction and its photophysical properties fully evaluated, both in terms of photostability and singlet oxygen production. It shows considerably enhanced photostability when compared with the parent 5,10,15,20-tetra-(3-hydroxy-phenyl)-porphyrin, with the photodegradation quantum yields for T(NAF)PP and T(OH)PP being 4.65 × 10⁻⁴ and 5.19 × 10⁻³, respectively. Its photodynamic effect in human carcinoma HT-29 cells was evaluated. The new porphyrin showed good properties as a sensitizer in photodynamic therapy with an in vitro cytotoxicity IC₅₀ value of 6.80 μg mL⁻¹ for a 24 h incubation. In addition to the potential of this compound, the synthetic route used provides possibilities of extension to a wide range of new sensitizers.     

Vapour pressures,enthalpies and entropies of sublimation of <Emphasis Type="Italic">para</Emphasis> substituted benzoic acids

The vapour pressures of six para-substituted benzoic acids were measured using the Knudsen effusion method within the pressure range (0.1–1 Pa) in the following temperature intervals: 4-hydroxybenzoic acid (365.09–387.28) K; 4-cyanobenzoic acid (355.14–373.28) K; 4-(methylamino)benzoic acid (359.12–381.29) K; 4-(dimethylamino)benzoic acid (369.29–391.01) K; 4-(acetylamino)benzoic acid (423.10–443.12) K; 4-acetoxybenzoic acid (351.28–373.27) K. From the temperature dependence of the vapour pressure, the standard molar enthalpy, entropy and Gibbs energy of sublimation, at the temperature 298.15 K, were derived for each of the studied compounds using estimated values of the heat capacity differences between the gaseous and the crystalline phases. Equations for estimating the vapour pressure of para substituted benzoic acids at the temperature of 298.15 K are proposed.     

Adenine versus guanine quartets in aqueous solution: dispersion-corrected DFT study on the differences in π-stacking and hydrogen-bonding behavior

We have investigated the performance of the dispersion-corrected density functionals (BLYP-D, BP86-D and PBE-D) and the widely used B3LYP functional for describing the hydrogen bonds and the stacking interactions in DNA base dimers. For the gas-phase situation, the bonding energies have been compared to the best ab initio results available in the literature. All dispersion-corrected functionals reproduce well the ab initio results, whereas B3LYP fails completely for the stacked systems. The use of the proper functional leads us to find minima for the adenine quartets, which are energetically and structurally very different from the C_4h structures, and might explain why adenine has to be sandwiched between guanine quartets to form planar adenine quartets.     

The eigenpairs of a Sylvester–Kac type matrix associated with a simple model for one-dimensional deposition and evaporation

A straightforward model for deposition and evaporation on discrete cells of a finite array of any dimension leads to a matrix equation involving a Sylvester–Kac type matrix. The eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the general matrix are determined for an arbitrary number of cells. A variety of models to which this solution may be applied are discussed.     

Sufficient conditions for positive definiteness of tridiagonal matrices revisited

We review several sufficient conditions for the positive definiteness of a tridiagonal matrix and propose a different approach to the problem, recalling and comprising little-known results on chain sequences.     

Ranking Beta Sheet Topologies with Applications to Protein Structure Prediction

One reason why ab initio protein structure predictors do not perform very well is their inability to reliably identify long-range interactions between amino acids. To achieve reliable long-range interactions, all potential pairings of β-strands (β-topologies) of a given protein are enumerated, including the native β-topology. Two very different β-topology scoring methods from the literature are then used to rank all potential β-topologies. This has not previously been attempted for any scoring method. The main result of this paper is a justification that one of the scoring methods, in particular, consistently top-ranks native β-topologies. Since the number of potential β-topologies grows exponentially with the number of β-strands, it is unrealistic to expect that all potential β-topologies can be enumerated for large proteins. The second result of this paper is an enumeration scheme of a subset of β-topologies. It is shown that native-consistent β-topologies often are among the top-ranked β-topologies of this subset. The presence of the native or native-consistent β-topologies in the subset of enumerated potential β-topologies relies heavily on the correct identification of β-strands. The third contribution of this paper is a method to deal with the inaccuracies of secondary structure predictors when enumerating potential β-topologies. The results reported in this paper are highly relevant for ab initio protein structure prediction methods based on decoy generation. They indicate that decoy generation can be heavily constrained using top-ranked β-topologies as they are very likely to contain native or native-consistent β-topologies.