Exciplex Formation in Lipid-bound Escherichia coli Flavohemoglobin

Flavohemoglobins have the particular capability of binding unsaturated and cyclopropanated fatty acids as free acids or phospholipids. Fatty acid binding to the ferric heme results in a weak but direct bonding interaction. Ferrous and ferric protein, in presence or absence of a bound lipid molecule, have been characterized by transient absorption spectroscopy. Measurements have been also carried out both on the ferrous deoxygenated and on the CO bound protein to investigate possible long-range interaction between the lipid acyl chain moiety and the ferrous heme. After excitation of the deoxygenated derivatives the relaxation process reveals a slow dynamics (350 ps) in lipid-bound protein but is not observed in the lipid-free protein. The latter feature and the presence of an extra contribution in the absorption spectrum, indicates that the interaction of iron heme with the acyl chain moiety occurs only in the excited electronic state and not in the ground electronic state. Data analysis highlights the formation of a charge-transfer complex in which the iron ion of the lipid-bound protein in the expanded electronic excited state, possibly represented by a high spin Fe III intermediate, is able to bind to the sixth coordination ligand placed at a distance of at 3.5 Å from the iron. A very small nanosecond geminate rebinding is observed for CO adduct in lipid-free but not in the lipid-bound protein. The presence of the lipid thus appears to inhibit the mobility of CO in the heme pocket.     

Amorphous Aggregation of Amyloid Beta 1‐40 Peptide in Confined Space

The amorphous aggregation of Aβ1‐40 peptide is addressed by using micromolding in capillaries. Both the morphology and the size of the aggregates are modulated by changing the contact angle of the sub‐micrometric channel walls. Upon decreasing the hydrophilicity of the channels, the aggregates change their morphology from small aligned drops to discontinuous lines, thereby keeping their amorphous structure. Aβ1‐40 fibrils are observed at high contact angles.     

NN final-state interaction in two-nucleon knockout from <Superscript>16</Superscript><Emphasis Type="Italic">O</Emphasis>

The influence of the mutual interaction between the two outgoing nucleons (NN-FSI) in electro- and photoinduced two-nucleon knockout from ¹⁶O has been investigated perturbatively. It turns out that the effect of NN-FSI depends on the kinematics and on the type of reaction considered. The effect is generally larger in pp- than in pn-knockout and in electroinduced than in photoinduced reactions. In superparallel kinematics NN-FSI leads in the (e,epp) channel to a strong increase of the cross-section, that is mainly due to a strong enhancement of the -current contribution. In pn-emission, however, this effect is partially cancelled by a destructive interference with the seagull current. For photoreactions NN-FSI is considerably reduced in superparallel kinematics and can be practically negligible in specific kinematics.Received: 1 July 2003, Published online: 10 February 2004PACS: 13.75.Cs Nucleon-nucleon interactions (including antinucleons, deuterons, etc.) - 21.60.-n Nuclear structure models and methods - 25.30.Fj Inelastic electron scattering to continuum     

Symbolic Computation of Newton Sum Rules for the Zeros of Polynomial Eigenfunctions of Linear Differential Operators

A symbolic algorithm based on the generalized Lucas polynomials of first kind is used in order to compute the Newton sum rules for the zeros of polynomial eigenfunctions of linear differential operators with polynomial coefficients.     

Electromagnetic proton-neutron knockout off <Superscript>16</Superscript>O : New achievements in theory

Results for the cross-sections of the exclusive ¹⁶O(e, e'pn)¹⁴N and ¹⁶O(γ, pn)¹⁴N knockout reactions are presented and discussed in different kinematics. In comparison with earlier work, a complete treatment of the center-of-mass (CM) effects in the nuclear one-body current is considered in connection with the problem of the lack of orthogonality between initial bound and final scattering states. The effects due to CM and orthogonalization are investigated in combination with different treatments of correlations in the two-nucleon overlap function and for different parametrizations of the two-body currents. The CM effects lead in super-parallel kinematics to a dramatic increase of the ¹⁶O(e, e'pn) cross-section to the 1₂ ⁺ excited state (3.95MeV) of ¹⁴N . In all the situations considered the results are very sensitive to the treatment of correlations. A crucial role is played by tensor correlations, but also the contribution of long-range correlations is important.