Translucent in air and iridescent in water: structural analysis of a salamander egg sac.

Females of some Asian salamanders of the genus Hynobius deposit in streams their eggs embedded in a translucent envelope called an 'egg sac'. The edges of the envelope exhibit a spectacular blue-to-yellow iridescent glow, which instantaneously disappears when the sac is removed from water. First, our scanning electron microscopy analyses reveal that the inner surface of the 100 μm-thick envelope displays striations (length scale of about 3 μm), which are themselves covered by much smaller (190 ± 30 nm) and quasi-periodic corrugations.

Infrared Spectroscopy as a Probe of Electronic Energy Transfer.

We have combined electronic and vibrational spectroscopy in a cryogenic ion trap to produce highly resolved, conformer-selective spectra for the ground and excited states of a peptide containing two chromophores. These spectra permit us to determine the precise three-dimensional structure of the peptide and give insight into the migration of the electronic excitation from phenylalanine to tyrosine because changes in the excited-state infrared spectra are sensitive to localization of the electronic energy in each chromophore. The well-controlled experimental conditions make this result a stringent test for theoretical methods dealing with electronic energy transfer.

IR-induced conformational isomerization of a helical peptide in a cold ion trap.

In this work, we use laser-induced population transfer techniques to study the conformational isomerization of a helical peptide, Ac-Phe-(Ala)5-LysH(+), in a cold ion trap. In one scheme, called IR-UV hole-filling spectroscopy, a single conformation is selectively excited with an IR pump laser via a distinct NH stretch vibration. After giving the vibrationally excited ions sufficient time to isomerize and re-cool in the trap, the new conformational redistribution is detected by UV photofragment spectroscopy.

Franck-Condon-like Progressions in Infrared Spectra of Biological Molecules.

Infrared spectra in the NH stretch region are often used for structure determination of gas-phase biological molecules. Vibrational couplings complicate the structure determination process by giving rise to additional vibrational bands along with the expected fundamental transitions. We present an example of a strong anharmonic coupling in a biological molecule, Ac-Phe-Ala-LysH(+), which causes the appearance of long vibrational progressions in the infrared spectrum.

Capping Motif for Peptide Helix Formation.

It is known that a C-terminal lysine stabilizes helix formation in polyalanine peptides that have seven or more residues. Using a combination of cold ion spectroscopy and DFT calculations, we demonstrate that even a three-residue peptide, Ac-Phe-Ala-LysH(+), adopts a structure in which the lysine side chain forms three hydrogen bonds with backbone carbonyls, reproducing the capping motif of larger polyalanine helices. This is confirmed by comparison with Ac-Phe-(Ala)5-LysH(+), which forms a 310 helix containing the same structural feature.