Purchase of A Departmental Stopped-Flow Equipped Circular Dichroism Spectrometer

University Of Illinois At Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

With support from the Chemistry Research Instrumentation and Facilities (CRIF) Program, the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois in Chicago will acquire a Stopped-Flow Equipped Circular Dichroism Spectrometer. This equipment will enhance research in a number of areas including a) studies on folding kinetics of designed peptides that form beta sheets in solution; b) fast folding events in secondary and tertiary structure formation of RNA; c) studies of sequence dependent context effects in duplex DNA; d) chemical biology studies of novel protease mechanisms; and e) protein and peptide folding and conformational studies. Circular dichroism spectroscopy is an extremely useful tool in modern analytical chemistry. It provides a very reliable and sensitive method for assigning absolute molecular configurations. The results from these studies will have an impact in a number of areas, especially biochemistry.