CD spectrophotometer

智能聚合物是包含信息的分子。天然核酸RNA和DNA具有特异性识别互补链从而形成双链的能力，可被认为是“智能聚合物”。寡肽和蛋白质是天然存在的“智能聚合物”，它激发了聚酰胺的合成，聚酰胺含有用于生物传感器开发的非自然报告基团。类似地，可以设计和合成人工或合成聚合物，使其基于特定序列或结构的读出具有相似的信息内容。其中一些人工合成的智能聚合物与核酸密切相关，而另一些则更为不同。尽管如此，智能聚合物相互作用形成结构的方式还需要研究——最强大的技术之一是使用一种被称为CD分光光度计的仪器来测量圆二色光谱。同样，智能聚合物（双链和其他螺旋）与小分子的相互作用是生物学中的基本相互作用。例如，与DNA相互作用的药物，从而形成了一些现代化疗方法的基础，可以通过CD分光光度法进行研究-这也是正在进行的研究领域。此外，寡肽的构象变化，例如由与期望目标的相互作用驱动，可以作为生物传感器开发的基础。

Smart Polymers are information-containing molecules. The natural nucleic acids, RNA and DNA, which have the ability of specifically recognizing a complementary strand and thus forming a duplex, may be considered as "smart polymers". Oligopeptides and proteins are naturally occuring "smart polymer" that has inspired the synthesis of polyamides that incorporate unnatural reporter groups for biosensor development. Simiarly, artificial or synthetic polymers can be designed and synthesized to have similar information content based on readout of a particular sequence or structure. Some of these synthetic smart polymers are closely related to nucleic acids and other are more divergent. Nonetheless, the way in which smart polymers interact to form structures requires investigation - and one of the most powerful techniques is by measuring the circular dichroic spectrum using an instrument known as a CD spectrophotometer.As well, the interaction of smart polymers (duplexes and other helices) with smaller molecules is a fundamental interaction in biology. For example, drugs that interact with DNA and thus form the basis of some modern chemotherapeutic approaches, may be investigated by CD spectrophotometry - and this is the area of research being pursued too. Further, conformational changes of oligopeptides for instance driven by interaction with a desired target may serve as the basis for biosensor development.