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Low Symmetry (low + symmetry)

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Chemistry100%

Selected Abstracts

Structural, Photophysical and Chiro-Optical Properties of Lanthanide Complexes with a Bis(benzimidazole)pyridine-Based Chiral Ligand

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF INORGANIC CHEMISTRY, Issue 22 2003
Gilles Muller
Abstract The neutral LnIII 1:1 nitrato complexes with the chiral ligand 2,6-bis(1- S -neopentylbenzimidazol-2-yl)pyridine (L11) have been synthesised and their stability constants measured in acetonitrile (log K1 = 4.0,6.4). The crystal and molecular structure of [Eu(NO3)3(L11)(MeCN)] shows the typical meridional planar coordination of L11 to the metal ion and low symmetry of the coordination polyhedron. The influence of the steric hindrance generated by the substituent at R2 on the crystal packing and bond lengths is discussed. Photophysical measurements show that ligand L11 induces a 3,,*-to-Ln energy-transfer process in the EuIII complex, while the TbIII compound is ten times less luminescent. Addition of a second molecule of L11 to give [Ln(ClO4)2(L11)2]+ leads to a large quenching of the EuIII luminescence (140-fold) due to several factors: a less efficient 1,,*,3,,* transfer (ca. fourfold), a smaller intrinsic quantum yield QEu (ca. threefold), and a substantially less efficient ligand-to-metal transfer (ca. 12-fold). In the case of the TbIII complex, the decrease in the energy of the triplet state reduces further the TbIII emission through increased back transfer. The specific rotary dispersion of the 1:1 and 1:2 complexes points to the chirality of the complexes arising mainly from the ligand, while the circularly polarized luminescence of these complexes with EuIII and TbIII displays a weak effect, pointing to a small diastereomeric excess in solution. Altogether, this study demonstrates that electronic, thermodynamic and photophysical properties of lanthanide complexes with aromatic terdentate ligands can be tuned by modifying the number and the arrangement of the ligands, as well as their substituents, particularly those in the R2 and R3 positions. (© Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim, Germany, 2003) [source]

Outer sphere mutagenesis of Lactobacillus plantarum manganese catalase disrupts the cluster core

FEBS JOURNAL, Issue 6 2003
Mechanistic implications
X-ray crystallography of the nonheme manganese catalase from Lactobacillus plantarum (LPC) [Barynin, V.V., Whittaker, M.M., Antonyuk, S.V., Lamzin, V.S., Harrison, P.M., Artymiuk, P.J. & Whittaker, J.W. (2001) Structure9, 725,738] has revealed the structure of the dimanganese redox cluster together with its protein environment. The oxidized [Mn(III)Mn(III)] cluster is bridged by two solvent molecules (oxo and hydroxo, respectively) together with a µ1,3 bridging glutamate carboxylate and is embedded in a web of hydrogen bonds involving an outer sphere tyrosine residue (Tyr42). A novel homologous expression system has been developed for production of active recombinant LPC and Tyr42 has been replaced by phenylalanine using site-directed mutagenesis. Spectroscopic and structural studies indicate that disruption of the hydrogen-bonded web significantly perturbs the active site in Y42F LPC, breaking one of the solvent bridges and generating an ,open' form of the dimanganese cluster. Two of the metal ligands adopt alternate conformations in the crystal structure, both conformers having a broken solvent bridge in the dimanganese core. The oxidized Y42F LPC exhibits strong optical absorption characteristic of high spin Mn(III) in low symmetry and lower coordination number. MCD and EPR measurements provide complementary information defining a ferromagnetically coupled electronic ground state for a cluster containing a single solvent bridge, in contrast to the diamagnetic ground state found for the native cluster containing a pair of solvent bridges. Y42F LPC has less than 5% of the catalase activity and much higher Km for H2O2 (,1.4 m) at neutral pH than WT LPC, although the activity is slightly restored at high pH where the cluster is converted to a diamagnetic form. These studies provide new insight into the contribution of the outer sphere tyrosine to the stability of the dimanganese cluster and the role of the solvent bridges in catalysis by dimanganese catalases. [source]

Explicitly correlated SCF study of anharmonic vibrations in (H2O)2

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUANTUM CHEMISTRY, Issue 4-5 2002
Donald D. Shillady
Abstract Modeling solvation in high-pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) requires calculation of anharmonic vibrational frequencies of solvent clusters for a statistical partition function. An efficient computational method that includes electron correlation is highly desirable for large clusters. A modified version of the "soft Coulomb hole" method of Chakravorty and Clementi has recently been implemented in a Gaussian-lobe-orbital (GLO) program (PCLOBE) to include explicit electron,electron correlation in molecules. The soft Coulomb hole is based on a modified form of Coulomb's law: An algorithm has been developed to obtain the parameter "w" from a polynomial in the effective scaling of each primitive Gaussian orbital relative to the best single Gaussian of the H1s orbital. This method yields over 90% of the correlation energy for molecules of low symmetry for which the original formula of Chakravorty and Clementi does not apply. In this work, all the vibrations of the water dimer are treated anharmonically. A quartic perturbation of the harmonic vibrational modes is constrained to be equal to the exact Morse potential eigenvalue based on a three-point fit. This work evaluates the usefulness of fitting a Morse potential to a hydrogen bond vibrational mode and finds it to be slightly better than using MP2 vibrational analysis for this important dimer. A three-point estimate of the depth, De, of a Morse potential leads to a correction formula for anharmonicity in terms of the perturbed harmonic frequency: When scaled by 0.9141, the harmonic Morse method leads to essentially the same results as scaling the BPW91 local density method by 0.9827. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2002 [source]

Type II dehydroquinase: molecular replacement with many copies

ACTA CRYSTALLOGRAPHICA SECTION D, Issue 1 2008
Kirsty Anne Stewart
Type II dehydroquinase is a small (150-amino-acid) protein which in solution packs together to form a dodecamer with 23 cubic symmetry. In crystals of this protein the symmetry of the biological unit can be coincident with the crystallographic symmetry, giving rise to cubic crystal forms with a single monomer in the asymmetric unit. In crystals where this is not the case, multiple copies of the monomer are present, giving rise to significant and often confusing noncrystallographic symmetry in low-symmetry crystal systems. These different crystal forms pose a variety of challenges for solution by molecular replacement. Three examples of structure solutions, including a highly unusual triclinic crystal form with 16 dodecamers (192 monomers) in the unit cell, are described. Four commonly used molecular-replacement packages are assessed against two of these examples, one of high symmetry and the other of low symmetry; this study highlights how program performance can vary significantly depending on the given problem. In addition, the final refined structure of the 16-dodecamer triclinic crystal form is analysed and shown not to be a superlattice structure, but rather an F -centred cubic crystal with frustrated crystallographic symmetry. [source]