A niccolite series of [bnH2 (2+) ][M(HCOO)3 ]2 (bnH2 (2+) =1,4-butyldiammonium) shows four kinds of metal-dependent phase transitions, from high temperature para-electric phases to low-temperature ferro-, antiferro-, glass-like, and para-electric phases. The conformational flexibility of bnH2 (2+) and the different size, mass, and bonding character of the metal ion lead to various disorder-orde...

Chronic Beryllium (Be) Disease (CBD) is a granulomatous disorder that predominantly affects the lung. The CBD is caused by Be exposure of individuals carrying the HLA-DP2 protein of the major histocompatibility complex class II (MHCII). While the involvement of Be in the development of CBD is obvious and the binding site and the sequence of Be and peptide binding were recently experimentally re...

Cowden syndrome is an autosomal dominant condition of multiple hamartomas. Patients with this phakomatosis have an increased risk of breast cancer and thyroid tumours. Lhermitte-Duclos disease is usually a sporadic condition of cerebellar ganglion cell hypertrophy, ataxia, mental retardation, and self-limited seizure disorder. We describe a three generation family with Cowden syndrome and Lherm...

We investigate the dynamics of a particle moving randomly along a disordered heteropolymer subjected to rapid conformational changes which induce superdiffusive motion in chemical coordinates. We study the antagonistic interplay between the enhanced diffusion and the quenched disorder. The dispersion speed exhibits universal behavior independent of the folding statistics. On the other hand it i...

Ubiquitin-like proteins play important roles in diverse biological processes. In this study, we present an unexpected finding that a ubiquitin-like small archaeal modifier protein (SAMP2) from Haloferax volcanii adopts two distinct states under low ionic condition. One of these is similar to the β-grasp structure conserved in ubiquitin-like proteins from eukaryotes; the other is disordered, lik...

A multiscale simulation scheme, which incorporates both long-range conformational disorder and local molecular ordering, is proposed for predicting large-scale morphologies and charge transport properties of polymeric semiconductors. Using poly(3-hexylthiophene) as an example, it is illustrated how the energy landscape and its spatial correlations evolve with increasing degree of structural ord...

We report the effects of zinc metal substitution on the molecular dynamics of protoporphyrin-IX in dichloromethane solvent by spectrally resolving the femtosecond photon echo spectrum. We have found that the coherence and population dynamics change due to the presence of Zn metal in the protoporphyrin-IX system. Zinc metal reduces the conformational disorder in the molecular structure of protop...

We demonstrate that ATR-FTIR spectroscopy can be used to record high-quality vibrational spectra of molecules at buried interfaces in metal-molecule-silicon and metal-molecule-metal junctions. This provides quantitative information on the structure and conformation of molecules at buried interfaces, an issue of critical importance to molecular electronics. In the model systems of Au on octadecy...

The surface parameter of nanoparticles such as hydrophobicity and a hydrophilicity on protein structure and function is very important. In this study, conformational changes of glucose oxidase (GOx) in the mercaptopurine: GNPs and 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid: GNPs as a hydrophobic and a hydrophilic GNPs surface was investigated by various spectroscopic techniques, including: UV-Vis absorption, f...

The quantum-chemical calculations on the conformational properties of 2-flouro-2-oxo- 1,3,2-dioxaphosphorinane (1), 2-choloro-2-oxo-1,3,2-dioxaphosphorinane (2) and 2-bromo- 2-oxo-1,3,2-dioxaphosphorinane (3) have been investigated by means of ab initio molecular orbital (HF/6-311+G**) and hybrid density functional theory (B3LYP/6-311+G**) based methods and Natural Bond Orbital (NBO) interpreta...