Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Dynamical Transition of Collective Motions in Dry Proteins

Published

Author(s)

Zhuo Liu, Juan Huang, Madhu Sudan Tyagi, Hugh O'Neill, Qiu Zhang, Eugene Mamontov, NItin Jain, Yujie Wang, Jie Zhang, Jeremy C. Smith, Liang Hong

Abstract

Water is widely assumed to be essential for protein dynamics and function. In particular, the well-documented "dynamical" transition at 200 K detected in hydrogenated proteins by incoherent neutron scattering, at which the protein changes from a rigid, non-functional form to a flexible, functional state, requires hydration. Here, we report on coherent neutron scattering experiments on perdeuterated proteins and reveal that a transition occurs in dry proteins at the same temperature resulting primarily from the thermal activation of collective heavy-atom motions. The dynamical transition discovered is intrinsic to the energy landscape of dry proteins.
Citation
Physical Review Letters
Volume
119
Issue
4

Keywords

Dynamical transition, protein, neutron scattering

Citation

Liu, Z. , Huang, J. , Tyagi, M. , O'Neill, H. , Zhang, Q. , Mamontov, E. , Jain, N. , Wang, Y. , Zhang, J. , Smith, J. and Hong, L. (2017), Dynamical Transition of Collective Motions in Dry Proteins, Physical Review Letters, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=923488 (Accessed April 25, 2024)
Created July 27, 2017, Updated October 12, 2021