Quantum chemical studies of protein structure

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Quantum chemical methods now permit the prediction of many spectroscopic observables in proteins and related model systems, in addition to electrostatic properties, which are found to be in excellent accord with those determined from experiment. I discuss the developments over the past decade in these areas, including predictions of nuclear magnetic resonance chemical shifts, chemical shielding tensors, scalar couplings and hyperfine (contact) shifts, the isomer shifts and quadrupole splittings in Mössbauer spectroscopy, molecular energies and conformations, as well as a range of electrostatic properties, such as charge densities, the curvatures, Laplacians and Hessians of the charge density, electrostatic potentials, electric field gradients and electrostatic field effects. The availability of structure/spectroscopic correlations from quantum chemistry provides a basis for using numerous spectroscopic observables in determining aspects of protein structure, in determining electrostatic properties which are not readily accessible from experiment, as well as giving additional confidence in the use of these techniques to investigate questions about chemical bonding and chemical reactions.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)1347-1361
Number of pages15
JournalPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Volume360
Issue number1458
DOIs
StatePublished - 2005

Keywords

  • Chemical shifts
  • Mössbauer spectroscopy
  • Nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy
  • Protein electrostatics
  • Protein structure
  • Quantum mechanics

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
  • General Agricultural and Biological Sciences

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