Investigating the Interactions of Ions with Polypeptides

在化学系的大分子、超分子和纳米化学项目的支持下，保罗·S。宾夕法尼亚州立大学的克雷默正在探索离子在含有有机分子和聚合物的水溶液中所起的作用。这样的研究可能会产生广泛的影响，因为离子会影响各种各样的过程，从允许分子聚集在一起或聚集到催化细胞中的过程，甚至是腌制黄瓜所需的时间。了解使蛋白质聚集成特定结构的途径可能有助于揭示某些人类疾病的本质。溶液的行为将被用来创建简单的演示设备作为教育推广工作的一部分。阳离子和阴离子在水溶剂中可能会相互作用，或与小分子，朗缪尔单层和聚合物链上的带电基团相互作用。包括红外、拉曼和振动和频产生在内的各种光谱将用于研究接触对、溶剂共享和溶剂分离的离子-离子相互作用如何受到离子大小、几何形状、氢键结合能力、货车范德华力和周围化学环境的影响。然后将这些相互作用的分子水平细节与相应水溶液的热力学性质相关联，以了解离子配对如何影响宏观行为。

With support from the Macromolecular, Supramolecular, and Nanochemistry program of the Chemistry Division, Professor Paul S. Cremer at the Pennsylvania State University is exploring the roles that ions play in aqueous solutions containing organic molecules and polymers. Such research can have broad impact as ions influence an enormous variety of processes from allowing molecules to clump together or aggregate, to catalyze processes in cells, and even the length of time it takes to pickle a cucumber. Understanding the pathways that enable proteins to aggregate into particular structures may help reveal the nature of certain human diseases. The behavior of the solutions will be used to create simple demonstration devices as part of an educational outreach effort.Cations and anions in aqueous solvent may interact with each other or with charged groups on small molecules, Langmuir monolayers, and polymer chains. A variety of spectroscopies including infrared, Raman, and vibrational sum frequency generation will be used to investigate how contact pair, solvent shared, and solvent separated ion-ion interactions are affected by the size of the ions, their geometry, their hydrogen bonding ability, van der Waals forces, and the surrounding chemical environment. The molecular level details of these interactions will then be correlated with thermodynamic properties of the corresponding aqueous solutions to understand how ion pairing can influence macroscopic behavior.