| 1. |
- Biler, Michal, et al.
(författare)
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Ground-State Destabilization by Active-Site Hydrophobicity Controls the Selectivity of a Cofactor-Free Decarboxylase
- 2020
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Ingår i: Journal of the American Chemical Society. - : AMER CHEMICAL SOC. - 0002-7863 .- 1520-5126. ; 142:47, s. 20216-20231
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Bacterial arylmalonate decarboxylase (AMDase) and evolved variants have become a valuable tool with which to access both enantiomers of a broad range of chiral arylaliphatic acids with high optical purity. Yet, the molecular principles responsible for the substrate scope, activity, and selectivity of this enzyme are only poorly understood to date, greatly hampering the predictability and design of improved enzyme variants for specific applications. In this work, empirical valence bond and metadynamics simulations were performed on wild-type AMDase and variants thereof to obtain a better understanding of the underlying molecular processes determining reaction outcome. Our results clearly reproduce the experimentally observed substrate scope and support a mechanism driven by ground-state destabilization of the carboxylate group being cleaved by the enzyme. In addition, our results indicate that, in the case of the nonconverted or poorly converted substrates studied in this work, increased solvent exposure of the active site upon binding of these substrates can disturb the vulnerable network of interactions responsible for facilitating the AMDase-catalyzed cleavage of CO2. Finally, our results indicate a switch from preferential cleavage of the pro-(R) to the pro-(S) carboxylate group in the CLG-IPL variant of AMDase for all substrates studied. This appears to be due to the emergence of a new hydrophobic pocket generated by the insertion of the six amino acid substitutions, into which the pro-(S) carboxylate binds. Our results allow insight into the tight interaction network determining AMDase selectivity, which in turn provides guidance for the identification of target residues for future enzyme engineering.
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| 2. |
- Biler, Michal, et al.
(författare)
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Quercetin and its analogues : optical and acido-basic properties
- 2017
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Ingår i: Physical Chemistry, Chemical Physics - PCCP. - : ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY. - 1463-9076 .- 1463-9084. ; 19:39, s. 26870-26879
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study is focused on eight structurally analogous natural flavonoids that exhibit a wide range of biological activities, which are of interest in pharmacy, cosmetics and the food industry. Using both experimental and theoretical approaches, we relate their fundamental physico-chemical properties to the structural motifs, with particular focus on UV/Vis absorption properties and pH dependence. We highlight the role of the C2-C3 double bond, whose presence or absence is responsible for the switch between absorption bands in the UVB and UVA regions, which is rationalized by strong modification of the involved molecular orbitals. After deprotonation in an alkaline environment, a typical switch in intensity at the maximum absorption wavelength (lambda(max)) is observed enabling the calculation of pK(a) values for compounds with a C2-C3 single bond, whereas a bathochromic shift of lambda(max) vs. pH is observed for the C2-C3 double bond containing compounds. These behaviors are also rationalized and understood by MO analysis. Interestingly, high pH (above 11 for ampelopsin and above 9 for myricetin) induces the formation of a long-wavelength peak arising from double and/or triple deprotonation. Substitution at position C3 by the OH group has almost no effect on lambda(max) for taxifolin and eriodictyol, whereas the effect is larger for quercetin and luteolin. An additional sugar moiety at C3 has a stabilizing effect and induces only minor changes in spectral behavior.
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| 3. |
- Cooper, Thomas M., et al.
(författare)
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Nanoscale Organization of a Platinum(II) Acetylide Cholesteric Liquid Crystal Molecular Glass for Photonics Applications
- 2020
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Ingår i: Advanced Functional Materials. - : Wiley. - 1616-301X .- 1616-3028. ; 30:28
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The fabrication, molecular structure, and spectroscopy of a stable cholesteric liquid crystal platinum acetylide glass obtained from trans-Pt(PEt3)(2)(C(sic)C-C6H5-C(sic)N)(C(sic)C-C6H5-COO-Cholesterol), are described and designated as PE1-CN-Chol. Polarized optical microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, and wide-angle X-ray scattering experiments show room temperature glassy/crystalline texture with crystal formation upon heating to 165 degrees C. Further heating results in conversion to cholesteric phase. Cooling to room temperature leads to the formation of a cholesteric liquid crystal glass. Scanning tunneling microscopy of a PE1-CN-Chol monolayer reveals self-assembly at the solid-liquid interface with an array of two molecules arranged in pairs, oriented head-to-head through the CN groups, giving rise to a lamella arrangement. The lamella structure obtained from molecular dynamics calculations shows a clear phase separation between the conjugated platinum acetylide and the hydrophobic cholesterol moiety with the lamellae separation distance being 4.0 nm. Ultrafast transient absorption and flash photolysis spectra of the glass show intersystem crossing to the triplet state occurring within 100 ps following excitation. The triplet decay time of the film compared to aerated and deoxygenated solutions is consistent with oxygen quenching at the film surface but not within the film. The high chromophore concentration, high glass thermal stability, and long triplet lifetime in air show that these materials have potential as nonlinear absorbing materials.
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| 4. |
- Cornelissen, Tim, et al.
(författare)
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Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of organic ferroelectrics
- 2019
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Ingår i: Physical Chemistry, Chemical Physics - PCCP. - : ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY. - 1463-9076 .- 1463-9084. ; 21:3, s. 1375-1383
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Ferroelectrics find broad applications, e.g. in non-volatile memories, but the switching kinetics in real, disordered, materials is still incompletely understood. Here, we develop an electrostatic model to study ferroelectric switching using 3D Monte Carlo simulations. We apply this model to the prototypical small molecular ferroelectric trialkylbenzene-1,3,5-tricarboxamide (BTA) and find good agreement between the Monte Carlo simulations, experiments, and molecular dynamics studies. Since the model lacks any explicit steric effects, we conclude that these are of minor importance. While the material is shown to have a frustrated antiferroelectric ground state, it behaves as a normal ferroelectric under practical conditions due to the large energy barrier for switching that prevents the material from reaching its ground state after poling. We find that field-driven polarization reversal and spontaneous depolarization have orders of magnitude different switching kinetics. For the former, which determines the coercive field and is relevant for data writing, nucleation occurs at the electrodes, whereas for the latter, which governs data retention, nucleation occurs at disorder-induced defects. As a result, by reducing the disorder in the system, the polarization retention time can be increased dramatically while the coercive field remains unchanged.
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| 5. |
- Crean, Rory M., et al.
(författare)
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Loop Dynamics and Enzyme Catalysis in Protein Tyrosine Phosphatases
- 2021
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Ingår i: Journal of the American Chemical Society. - : American Chemical Society (ACS). - 0002-7863 .- 1520-5126. ; 143:10, s. 3830-3845
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs) play an important role in cellular signaling and have been implicated in human cancers, diabetes, and obesity. Despite shared catalytic mechanisms and transition states for the chemical steps of catalysis, catalytic rates within the PTP family vary over several orders of magnitude. These rate differences have been implied to arise from differing conformational dynamics of the closure of a protein loop, the WPD-Ioop, which carries a catalytically critical residue. The present work reports computational studies of the human protein tyrosine phosphatase 1B (PTP1B) and YopH from Yersinia pestis, for which NMR has demonstrated a link between their respective rates of WPD-Ioop motion and catalysis rates, which differ by an order of magnitude. We have performed detailed structural analysis, both conventional and enhanced sampling simulations of their loop dynamics, as well as empirical valence bond simulations of the chemical step of catalysis. These analyses revealed the key residues and structural features responsible for these differences, as well as the residues and pathways that facilitate allosteric communication in these enzymes. Curiously, our wild-type YopH simulations also identify a catalytically incompetent hyper-open conformation of its WPD-loop, sampled as a rare event, previously only experimentally observed in YopH-based chimeras. The effect of differences within the WPD-loop and its neighboring loops on the modulation of loop dynamics, as revealed in this work, may provide a facile means for the family of PTP enzymes to respond to environmental changes and regulate their catalytic activities.
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| 6. |
- De Oliveira, Danilo Hirabae, et al.
(författare)
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Silk Assembly against Hydrophobic Surfaces?Modeling and Imaging of Formation of Nanofibrils
- 2023
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Ingår i: ACS Applied Bio Materials. - : AMER CHEMICAL SOC. - 2576-6422. ; 6:3, s. 1011-1018
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- A detailed insight about the molecular organization behind spider silk assembly is valuable for the decoding of the unique properties of silk. The recombinant partial spider silk protein 4RepCT contains four poly-alanine/glycine-rich repeats followed by an amphiphilic C-terminal domain and has shown the capacity to self-assemble into fibrils on hydrophobic surfaces. We herein use molecular dynamic simulations to address the structure of 4RepCT and its different parts on hydrophobic versus hydrophilic surfaces. When 4RepCT is placed in a wing arrangement model and periodically repeated on a hydrophobic surface, fi-sheet structures of the poly-alanine repeats are preserved, while the CT part is settled on top, presenting a fibril with a height of similar to 7 nm and a width of similar to 11 nm. Both atomic force microscopy and cryo-electron microscopy imaging support this model as a possible fibril formation on hydrophobic surfaces. These results contribute to the understanding of silk assembly and alignment mechanism onto hydrophobic surfaces.
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| 7. |
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| 8. |
- Gowda, Vasantha, et al.
(författare)
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Structural characterisation of amyloid-like fibrils formed by an amyloidogenic peptide segment of β-lactoglobulin
- 2021
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Ingår i: RSC Advances. - : Royal Society of Chemistry. - 2046-2069. ; 11:45, s. 27868-27879
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Protein nanofibrils (PNFs) represent a promising class of biobased nanomaterials for biomedical and materials science applications. In the design of such materials, a fundamental understanding of the structure–function relationship at both molecular and nanoscale levels is essential. Here we report investigations of the nanoscale morphology and molecular arrangement of amyloid-like PNFs of a synthetic peptide fragment consisting of residues 11–20 of the protein β-lactoglobulin (β-LG11–20), an important model system for PNF materials. Nanoscale fibril morphology was analysed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) that indicates the presence of polymorphic self-assembly of protofilaments. However, observation of a single set of 13C and 15N resonances in the solid-state NMR spectra for the β-LG11–20 fibrils suggests that the observed polymorphism originates from the assembly of protofilaments at the nanoscale but not from the molecular structure. The secondary structure and inter-residue proximities in the β-LG11–20 fibrils were probed using NMR experiments of the peptide with 13C- and 15N-labelled amino acid residues at selected positions. We can conclude that the peptides form parallel β-sheets, but the NMR data was inconclusive regarding inter-sheet packing. Molecular dynamics simulations confirm the stability of parallel β-sheets and suggest two preferred modes of packing. Comparison of molecular dynamics models with NMR data and calculated chemical shifts indicates that both packing models are possible.
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| 9. |
- Linares, Mathieu, et al.
(författare)
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Elucidating DNA binding of dithienylethenes from molecular dynamics and dichroism spectra
- 2019
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Ingår i: Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics. - : Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). - 1463-9084 .- 1463-9076. ; 21:7, s. 3637-3643
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- DNA binding modes of the stereoisomeric rotamers of two dithenylethene derivatives (DTE1 and DTE2) representing candidate molecular photoswitches of great promise for photopharmacology and nanotechnology have been identified and characterized in terms of their binding energies and electronic circular dichroism (CD) responses. In the open form, two binding modes are identified namely minor-groove binding of the lowest-energy conformer with an anti-parallel arrangement of methyl groups and major-groove double-intercalation of the P-enantiomers of an intermediate-state rotamer. Only the latter binding mode is found to be enantiomerically selective and expected to have an overall negative linear dichroism (LD) as observed in the experiment for DTE1 (Angew. Chem., Int. Ed., 2013, 52, 4393). In the closed form, the most favorable binding mode is found to be minor groove binding. Also this binding mode is found to be enantiomerically selective and for DTE1, it is the M-enantiomer that binds the strongest, showing a positive theoretical signature CD band in the long wavelength region with origin in pyridinium ligands. The theoretical CD spectrum is found to be in good agreement with the experimental one, which provides an indirect evidence for a correct identification of the binding mode in the closed form.
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| 10. |
- Urbanaviciute, Indre, 1990-, et al.
(författare)
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Negative piezoelectric effect in an organic supramolecular ferroelectric
- 2019
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Ingår i: Materials Horizons. - : Royal Society of Chemistry. - 2051-6347 .- 2051-6355. ; 6, s. 1688-1698
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The vast majority of ferroelectric materials demonstrate a positive piezoelectric effect. Theoretically, the negative piezoelectric coefficient d33 could be found in certain classes of ferroelectrics, yet in practice, the number of materials showing linear longitudinal contraction with increasing applied field (d33 < 0) is limited to few ferroelectric polymers. Here, we measure a pronounced negative piezoelectric effect in the family of organic ferroelectric small-molecular BTAs (trialkylbenzene-1,3,5-tricarboxamides), which can be tuned by mesogenic tail substitution and structural disorder. While the large- and small-signal strain in highly-ordered thin-film BTA capacitor devices are dominated by intrinsic contributions and originates from piezostriction, rising disorder introduces additional extrinsic factors that boost the large-signal d33 up to −20 pm V-ˆ’1 in short-tailed molecules. Interestingly, homologues with longer mesogenic tails show a large-signal electromechanical response that is dominated by the quadratic Maxwell strain with significant mechanical softening upon polarization switching, whereas the small-signal strain remains piezostrictive. Molecular dynamics and DFT calculations both predict a positive d33 for defect-free BTA stacks. Hence, the measured negative macroscopic d33 is attributed to the presence of structural defects that enable the dimensional effect to dominate the piezoelectric response of BTA thin films.
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| 11. |
- Urbanaviciute, Indre, et al.
(författare)
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Negative piezoelectric effect in an organic supramolecular ferroelectric
- 2019
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Ingår i: Materials Horizons. - : Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). - 2051-6347 .- 2051-6355. ; 6:8, s. 1688-1698
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The vast majority of ferroelectric materials demonstrate a positive piezoelectric effect. Theoretically, the negative piezoelectric coefficient d(33) could be found in certain classes of ferroelectrics, yet in practice, the number of materials showing linear longitudinal contraction with increasing applied field (d(33) < 0) is limited to few ferroelectric polymers. Here, we measure a pronounced negative piezoelectric effect in the family of organic ferroelectric small-molecular BTAs (trialkylbenzene-1,3,5-tricarboxamides), which can be tuned by mesogenic tail substitution and structural disorder. While the large- and small-signal strain in highly-ordered thin-film BTA capacitor devices are dominated by intrinsic contributions and originates from piezostriction, rising disorder introduces additional extrinsic factors that boost the large-signal d(33) up to -20 pm V-1 in short-tailed molecules. Interestingly, homologues with longer mesogenic tails show a large-signal electromechanical response that is dominated by the quadratic Maxwell strain with significant mechanical softening upon polarization switching, whereas the small-signal strain remains piezostrictive. Molecular dynamics and DFT calculations both predict a positive d(33) for defect-free BTA stacks. Hence, the measured negative macroscopic d(33) is attributed to the presence of structural defects that enable the dimensional effect to dominate the piezoelectric response of BTA thin films.
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| 12. |
- Urbanaviciute, Indre, et al.
(författare)
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Suppressing depolarization by tail substitution in an organic supramolecular ferroelectric
- 2019
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Ingår i: Physical Chemistry, Chemical Physics - PCCP. - : ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY. - 1463-9076 .- 1463-9084. ; 21:4, s. 2069-2079
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite being very well established in the field of electro-optics, ferroelectric liquid crystals so far lacked interest from a ferroelectric device perspective due to a typically high operating temperature, a modest remnant polarization and/or poor polarization retention. Here, we experimentally demonstrate how simple structural modification of a prototypical ferroelectric liquid-crystal benzene-1,3,5-trisamide (BTA) - introduction of branched-tail substituents - results in materials with a wide operating temperature range and a data retention time of more than 10 years in thin-film solution-processed capacitor devices at room temperature. The observed differences between linear- and branched-tail compounds are analyzed using density functional theory (DFT) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We conclude that morphological factors like improved packing quality and reduced disorder, rather than electrostatic interactions or intra/inter-columnar steric hindrance, underlay the superior properties of the branched-tailed BTAs. Synergistic effects upon blending of compounds with branched and linear side-chains can be used to further improve the materials' characteristics.
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