Biopolymers such as proteins, DNA and RNA fold into large, macromolecular chiral structures. As charged macromolecules, they absorb strongly in the terahertz due to large-scale collective vibrational modes; as chiral objects, this absorption should be coupled with significant circular dichroism. Terahertz circular dichroism (TCD) is potentially important as a biospecific sensor, unobscured by s...

We have utilized circular dichroism spectroscopy to examine the interaction of antithrombin with heparin-derived oligosaccharides and mucopolysaccharides of various sizes. Our studies demonstrate that the various complexes exhibit two major types of chiral absorption spectra. The first of these patterns is seen when octasaccharide, decasaccharide, dodecasaccharide, or tetradecasaccharide fragme...

Many enzymes contain metalloporphyrins as prosthetic groups, which catalyse a vide variety of biologically important reactions. Hence, these species have been studied by a large number of spectroscopic techniques including Magnetic Circular Dichroism Spectroscopy (MCD). This method is especially useful to investigate the electronic structures and spectra of paramagnetic complexes [1]. However, ...

Chiral twisting of the molecular orientation within the layer of a smectic-A liquid crystal has been investigated using circular dichroism spectroscopy. The results indicate that a rotation of the layers away from the alignment direction is induced by the surface electroclinic effect. This leads to an interfacial region where the molecular director twists from the alignment direction until it r...

Bedaquiline is the first FDA-approved new chemical entity to fight multidrug-resistant tuberculosis in the last forty years. Our group replaced the quinoline ring with a naphthalene ring, leading to a new type of triarylbutanol skeleton. An asymmetric synthetic route was established for our bedaquiline analogues, and the goal of assigning their absolute configurations was achieved by comparison...

In the recently proposed phenomenon, nuclear spin-induced circular dichroism (NSCD), collective magnetisation of nuclei induces circular dichroism in a light beam passing through a molecular sample. Here we present the first computational predictions of NSCD for fullerenes C60 and C70. We show that the NSCD signal is nucleus-specific, like in NMR spectroscopy. Thus, NSCD may provide a new and p...