Berlin 2001 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Downloads | Help
CPP: Chemische Physik und Polymerphysik
CPP 17: Poster: Spectroscopy and Single Particle Spectroscopy of Molecular Systems, Photoprocesses, Biological Systems
CPP 17.1: Poster
Tuesday, April 3, 2001, 12:30–15:00, AT1
Structural Dynamics of Small Peptides on the Sub-Picosecond Timescale — •Peter Hamm1, Sander Woutersen1, Yuguang Mu2, and Gerhard Stock2 — 1Max Born Institut, Berlin — 2J. W. Goethe Universität, Frankfurt
The three-dimensional structure of peptides, proteins and enzymes plays a crucial role for their biological functionality. It is mainly the success of x-ray and NMR spectroscopy as structural analysis tools which allowed the recent tremendous process in understanding biological reactions on an atomic level. It is well known that proteins fluctuate on a wide spread of time scales, lasting from femtosecond to seconds, and that these equilibrium fluctuations around the (time averaged) structure are as important for their functionality as the structure itself. However, since appropriate spectroscopic methods are very limited, our knowledge on such fluctuations stems mostly from computer molecular dynamic (MD) simulations.
We present a novel method for investigating such conformational dynamics. This method is the vibrational analog of 2D Nuclear Overhauser Effect Spectroscopy, and is specifically sensitive to conformational dynamics taking place on a 100 fs time scale. The technique is applied to the peptide trialanine in aqueous solution, for which we find good agreement with MD simulations.