Measurement of circular dichroism dynamics in a nanosecond temperature-jump experiment

Mai-Thu Khuc (1) , Lucille Mendonça (1) , S. Sharma (2) , M. Volk (2) , Xavier Solinas (1) , François Hache (1)

1 LOB - Laboratoire d'optique et biosciences
2 University of Liverpool

The use of a fast temperature jump (T-jump) is a very powerful experiment aiming at studying protein denaturation dynamics. However, probing the secondary structure is a difficult challenge and rarely yields quantitative values. We present the technical implementation of far-UV circular dichroism in a nanosecond T-jump experiment and show that this experiment allows us to follow quantitatively the change in the helical fraction of a poly(glutamic acid) peptide during its thermal denaturation with 12 ns time resolution. Cop. 2011 American Institute of Physics.

Domains: Physics [physics]; Physics [physics]; Optics [physics.optics]

Mai-Thu Khuc, Lucille Mendonça, S. Sharma, M. Volk, Xavier Solinas, et al.. Measurement of circular dichroism dynamics in a nanosecond temperature-jump experiment. Review of Scientific Instruments, 2011, 82 (5), ⟨10.1063/1.3592331⟩. ⟨hal-00803784⟩