The conformationally specific vibrational spectra could be interrogated in the C H and N H stretch regions, which are extremely sensitive to the local hydrogen-bonded conformational environment.
The splitting of the resonance of methylene carbon atoms in conformational environment TG·GT of propene units in propene-rich copolymers has been explained by a conformational effect, assuming that the butene units, included in the crystalline phase of syndiotactic polypropylene, produce a slight distortion of the local conformation close to the comonomeric units.
Weak intermolecular interactions such as hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions are key players in stabilizing energetically-favored ligands, in an open conformational environment of protein structures.
Modified amino acids can change the local electrostatic and conformational environment of a protein and may cause a variety of downstream biological responses.
Overall, the results for the two clusters located in the active site region suggest that selective forces act in several of the more permissive sites of subsites P2 and B1, shaping the local chemical and conformational environment without significantly interfering with the position critical residues, which are probably subject to purifying selection.
We can, however, make and test predictions based on the unique conformational and electronic environments resulting from this structure.
Thus, assessing the catalytic contribution of enzymes based solely on electrostatics while discounting the presence of thermal fluctuations only provides a static snapshot along the free energy surface of an enzymatic reaction and fails to capture the ensemble of varying conformational and electrostatic environments that exist in solution.
We first accessed the conformational properties in different environments by circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy.
A more detailed understanding of the complex and environment dependent conformational landscape will likely be the focus of the next generation of guidelines allowing property predictions of ever more complex compounds.
Recent studies in protein folding suggest that native state topology plays a dominant role in determining the folding mechanism, yet an analogous statement has not been made for RNA, most likely due to the strong coupling between the ionic environment and conformational energetics that make RNA folding more complex than protein folding.
