Application of peptide nucleic acids containing azobenzene self-assembled electrochemical biosensors in detecting DNA sequences

Hybridization of peptide nucleic acids probe containing azobenzene (NH₂-TNT₄, N-PNAs) with DNA was performed by covalently immobilizing of NH₂-TNT₄ in sequence on the 3-mercaptopropionic acid self-assembled monolayer modified gold electrode with the helps of N-(3-dimethylaminopropy1)-N′-ethylcarbodiimide hydrochloride (EDC) and N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS), and the hybrid was coded as N-PNAs/DNA. Using [Fe(CN)₆]^4−/3− (1:1) as the electrochemical indicator, the electrochemical properties of the N-PNAs self-assembled monolayer (N-PNAs-SAMs) and N-PNAs/DNA hybridization system under the conditions of before and after UV light irradiation were characterized with cyclic voltammetry (CV), differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), and electrochemical impedance spectra (EIS). Results showed that the redox currents decreased with the increase of irradiation time, suggesting that the ability of the charge transfer on the electrode surface was weakened and the conformation of hybrid system had been changed, and the control of PNAs/DNA hybridization could be realized by UV light irradiation. Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 50572107) and “Top Hundred Talents Program” of Chinese Academy of Science     

The tautomerization of H2NCH2C(OH)NH to H2NCH2CONH2 in the interstellar medium

The tautomerization of H2NCH2C(OH)NH to H2NCH2CONH2 is an important step by way of Strecker synthesis for the production of glycine in the interstellar medium (ISM) with respect to the origin of amino acids on the early Earth.Our work indicates two mechanisms for the tautomerization to occur.k CVT/SCT (rate constant) is 45.6s-1 at 50 K,obtained with the small curvature tunneling (SCT) approximation and canonical variational transition state theory (CVT),to support one mechanism assisted by quantum tunneling...     

Pharmacophore-based structure optimization of angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitory peptide

Chemical feature based pharmacophore models were generated for an angiotensin converting enzyme(ACE) inhibitory peptide using the Discovery Studio 2.0 pharmacophore modeling approach. The pharmacophore hypothesis selected has five features(one negative ionizable region,one hydrogen bond donor,one hydrogen bond acceptor and two hydrophobic functional groups). Additionally,ACE inhibitory hexapeptide previously obtained from silkworm pupae protein was optimized to target the ACE based on the selected pharmacophore. The results suggest that tri-peptide(thr-val-phe) may be structural determinant of ACE activity. Docking studies further provided confidence for the validity of the selected pharmacophore model to perform structure optimization of the ACE inhibitory peptide.