Organized but intermittent: a liquid mimicking disordered proteins
Proteins, the engines of life, form the basis for all vital functions in all living systems. Most commonly, the biological functions of the proteins are imposed by their well-defined structures. This is not the case, however, for the so-called intrinsically disordered proteins (IDP), which e.g. are involved in DNA repair. In IDPs, the structural motifs are labile, rapidly fluctuating between conformations, which makes them very challenging to study.

The Theory of Condensed Matter and Optical Condensed Matter Physics groups (both Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials) together with colleagues from the University of Amsterdam joined efforts to mimic the properties of IDPs with a liquid consisting of the building block of proteins, the molecule N-methylacetamide (NMA). The dynamical properties of NMA were studied using combined computational and experimental ultrafast spectroscopy, which probes fast phenomena from a femto- to the pico-second timescale. Surprisingly, NMA molecules interacting via hydrogen bonds form fragile transient chain-like structures, which have been identified from their unique spectroscopic signature. Our ability to distinguish such chains provides the excellent potential for identifying similar organized but intermittent structures in IDPs.
The results of this work are published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (A. V. Cunha, E. Salamatova, R. Bloem, S. Roeters, S. Woutersen, M. S. Pshenichnikov, and T.L.C Jansen, “Interplay Between Hydrogen Bonding and Vibrational Coupling in Liquid N-Methylacetamide”, J. Phys. Chem. Lett., 2017, 8, 2438–2444 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b00731
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b00731).
You may also want to have a look at the JPC Letters Spotlight related to the article.
Last modified: | 12 June 2017 1.37 p.m. |
More news
-
24 March 2025
UG 28th in World's Most International Universities 2025 rankings
The University of Groningen has been ranked 28th in the World's Most International Universities 2025 by Times Higher Education. With this, the UG leaves behind institutions such as MIT and Harvard. The 28th place marks an increase of five places: in...
-
05 March 2025
Women in Science
The UG celebrates International Women’s Day with a special photo series: Women in Science.
-
16 December 2024
Jouke de Vries: ‘The University will have to be flexible’
2024 was a festive year for the University of Groningen. In this podcast, Jouke de Vries, the chair of the Executive Board, looks back.