Abstract7-Azaindole is the chromophoric moiety of 7-azatryptophan, which is an alternative to tryptophan as an optical probe of protein structure and dynamics. The great power of the 7-azaindole chromophore is that it is red shifted both in absorption and emission from tryptophan, that its fluorescence decay is single exponential in water under appropriate conditions, and that its emission is sensitive to solvent. In addition, 7-azatryptophan can be incorporated into synthetic peptides and bacterial protein. In this article, the interactions of 7-azaindole with its environment are discussed. Special attention is directed to the difference in its fluorescence properties in water as opposed to nonaqueous solvents. The sensitivity of 7-azaindole to its environment is demonstrated and then exploited by studying it and its analogs in peptides and in complexes with larger proteins containing many tryptophan residues. Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Biophysics Iowa State UniVersity, Ames, Iowa 50011ReceiVed: October 1, 1996; In Final Form: January 7, 1997 X 7-Azaindole is the chromophoric moiety of 7-azatryptophan, which is an alternative to tryptophan as an optical probe of protein structure and dynamics. The great power of the 7-azaindole chromophore is that it is red shifted both in absorption and emission from tryptophan, that its fluorescence decay is single exponential in water under appropriate conditions, and that its emission is sensitive to solvent. In addition, 7-azatryptophan can be incorporated into synthetic peptides and bacterial protein. In this article, the interactions of 7-azaindole with its environment are discussed. Special attention is directed to the difference in its fluorescence properties in water as opposed to nonaqueous solvents. The sensitivity of 7-azaindole to its environment is demonstrated and then exploited by studying it and its analogs in peptides and in complexes with larger proteins containing many tryptophan residues.

Yttrium hydroxide gel was dried by five techniques to study their influences on the sintering behavior of yttria. Dried precursors, calcined and sintered oxides, and the initial gel were examined via Fourier transform infrared photoacoustic andor attenuated total reflection spectroscopies. Carbonate was found to be in unidentate coordination to surface yttrium on both the dried hydroxide precursor and calcined oxide particles. An inverse correlation was found between the normalized surface carbonate concentration (carbonate concentration (wt %)/surface area (mZ/g)) of precursors and calcined oxides and the density of their corresponding sintered bodies. Carbonate affects sintered density during the calcination and sintering steps.

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