March 11, 2014 — Princeton Instruments, a leading manufacturer of sensitive low-light imaging and spectroscopic instruments, hails the landmark 2D SFG measurements performed on an interface-bound peptide by the Zanni group at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Details of this groundbreaking work can be found in the recently published article, “Two-Dimensional Sum-Frequency Generation Reveals Structure and Dynamics of a Surface-Bound Peptide” [J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2014, 136 (3), pp 956–962; DOI: 10.1021/ja408682s]*.
Led by professor of chemistry Martin Zanni, the UW-Madison research group measured the two-dimensional sum frequency generation (SFG) spectrum of a peptide bound to a gold surface using a state-of-the-art Princeton Instruments PIXIS:400B CCD camera.
Determination of the secondary structure of interface-bound peptides is a powerful tool in the investigation of such protein-misfolding disorders as Alzheimer’s disease and diabetes. Unlike conventional linear spectroscopic methods, 2D IR and 2D SFG provide unambiguous information about the structure and dynamics of target molecules.
Emerging nonlinear spectroscopic methods like 2D IR require highly sensitive photodetectors. Commercialized by companies such as PhaseTech Spectroscopy (Madison, WI), these increasingly popular techniques offer an exciting new approach toward resolving the challenging medical problems posed by protein-misfolding diseases.
*http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja408682s?source=cen
For more information, please refer to www.princetoninstruments.com/products/speccam/pixis/.
