FTIR difference spectroscopy has been established as a new tool to study the GTPase reaction of H-ras p21 (Ras) in a time-resolved mode at atomic resolution without crystallization. The phosphate vibrations were analyzed using site specifically 18O-labeled caged GTP isotopomers. One nonbridging oxygen per nucleotide was replaced for an 18O isotope in the alpha-, beta-, or gamma-position of the phosphate chain. In photolysis experiments with free caged GTP, strong vibrational coupling was observed among all phosphate groups. The investigation of Ras*caged GTP photolysis and the subsequent hydrolysis reaction of Ras*GTP showed that the phosphate vibrations are largely decoupled by interaction with the protein in contrast to free GTP. The characteristic isotope shifts allow band assignments to isolated alpha-, beta-, and gamma-phosphate vibrations of caged GTP, GTP, and the liberated inorganic phosphate. The unusually low frequency of the beta (PO2-) vibration of Ras-bound GTP, as compared to free GTP, indicates a large decrease in the P-O bond order. The bond order decrease reveals that the oxygen atoms of the beta (PO2-) group interact much more strongly with the protein environment than the gamma-oxygen atoms. Thereby, electrons are withdrawn from the beta-phosphorus, and thus also from the beta/gamma-bridging oxygen. This leads to partial bond breakage or at least weakening of the bond between the beta/gamma-bridging oxygen and the gamma-phosphorus atom as a putative early step of the GTP hydrolysis. Based on these results, we propose a key role of the beta-phosphate for GTP hydrolysis. The assignments of phosphate bands provide a crucial marker for further time-resolved FTIR studies of the GTPase reaction of Ras.
The migration of plasticizer from a product can restrict the usability of the product as this process affects material properties and shorten their service life. The objective of the present study is to investigate this migration process and observe its dynamics under short‐term thermal aging. For this purpose, in situ FTIR‐ATR spectra are recorded after every hour for continuous 60 h, while the plasticized and unplasticized NBR system is mounted and heated on ATR crystal with a heating plate at 70 °C. The band ratio of the corresponding characteristic peak areas from plasticizer carbonyl (1736 cm−1) and reference C‐H stretching from butadiene (968 cm−1) is determined after every hour. TGA analysis carried out on similar NBR samples with gradually increasing plasticizer amounts helped to obtain the calibration curve which is used to determine the migrated plasticizer amount. With the obtained data, it is possible to determine the diffusion coefficient and to quantify the migrated plasticizer amount during short‐term thermal aging and thus present a universal tool for the comparison of different plasticizers with respect to their migration behavior.
The catalytic pyrolysis of lignites is a technical process whose development is complex and timeconsuming with the goal to maximize the yield of the desired low-volatile hydrocarbons of choice and to minimize the yield of solid residual products. Not every type of lignite is suitable for this process due to its particular chemical composition. In order to be able to predict which lignite specimen will be an especially promising raw material for the pyrolytic liberation of target products, the chemical classification by IR spectroscopic methods was investigated. MIR spectroscopy has been demonstrated to be a valuable tool to characterize the the molecular composition of lignites and to determine the concentrations of aliphatic and aromatic functional groups in lignite as well as alcoholic OH and other forms of bound oxygen. These data provide a comprehensive chemical characterization of the material and help to predict the composition of the chemical components liberated by catalytic decomposition. With a complementary NIR spectroscopic approach, a chemometric method has been developed with which the elemental composition of the lignites can be determined in a fast and pragmatic way leading to a prediction of the product range of a theoretical pyrolytic product range. Thus, this spectroscopic investigation is a toolbox that can answer the question if the commercial exploitation of catalytic pyrolysis of a lignite sample in question will make sense without preliminary conduction of long and time-consuming testing.
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