Spectroscopic investigations of water-mediated interactions
Abstract
Water is ubiquitous in many fields, especially geological and biological chemistry. Water is the medium in which most biological processes occur, and evidence suggests that water may actually play a key role in initiating and mediating these processes. To study the structure of water, particularly around hydrophobic molecules that may provide insight into the hydration of complex biological molecules like proteins, Raman vibrational spectroscopy is combined with multivariate curve resolution to produce a "hydration shell spectroscopy." This method extracts, from the raw data, the vibrational features arising from the solute and from perturbed solvent molecules that are characteristically different from the bulk. This method is employed to study, in aqueous solution, the formation of π-hydrogen with aromatics, a temperature-induced water structural transformation within the hydration shell of hydrophobic solutes, the formation and energetics of dangling OH bonds around such solutes, and the effect a neighboring carboxylate charge has on the hydrophobic character – and thus, the appearance of the previously mentioned phenomena – of the alkyl chains of the carboxylate. The results of these experiments offer exciting new information regarding these phenomena, and may be key steps in understanding more complex – and realistic – biological systems.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Ben-Amotz, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Physical chemistry
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