First-principles calculations of electronic circular dichroism (ECD) are widely used to determine absolute configurations of chiral molecules. In addition, ECD is a sensitive probe for the three-dimensional molecular structure, making ECD calculations a useful tool to study conformational changes. In this review, we explain the origin of ECD and optical activity using response theory. While the...

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in magneto-optic spectroscopy techniques that use nuclear magnetization as the source of the magnetic field. Here we present a formulation of magnetic circular dichroism (CD) due to magnetically polarized nuclei, nuclear spin-induced CD (NSCD), in molecules. The NSCD ellipticity and nuclear spin-induced optical rotation (NSOR) angle correspond to t...

MOTIVATION Circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy is one of the most versatile tools to study protein folding and to validate the proper fold of purified proteins. Here, we aim to provide a readily accessible, user-friendly and platform-independent tool capable of analysing multiple CD datasets of virtually any format and returning results as high-quality graphical output to the user. RESULTS C...

The potential of fluorescence-detected circular dichroism (FDCD) to extend the scope of the exciton chirality method is rooted in the increased sensitivity and selectivity of fluorescence as compared with absorbance measurements. In this paper, several practical aspects of FDCD are addressed with model compounds possessing a (1R,2R)-trans-1,2-cyclohexanediol skeleton and two chromophores attach...

The inter-band optical absorption in graphene characterized by its fine-structure constant has a universal value of 2.3% independent of the material parameters. However, for several graphenebased photonic applications, enhanced optical absorption in graphene is highly desired. In this work, we quantify the tunability of optical absorption in graphene via the Fermi level in graphene, angle of in...

Poly(2,7-di-n-pentyldibenzofulvene)s with no stereocenters, obtained by anionic polymerization using chiral 9-fluorenyllithium ligand complexes, showed intense circular dichroism in film form due purely to the chiral conformation of the main chain, while no chiroptical properties were detectable in solution.

In this review, we shall outline the basic principles of circular dichroism (CD) indicating the types of structural information relevant to the study of biomolecules, such as proteins or DNA. We are mainly interested to show the utility of this technique to study protein-ligand, DNA-ligand and protein-DNA interactions.