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Experimental Methods In Cryogenic Spectroscopy: Stark Effect Measurements In Substituted Myoglobin, Bradley Michael Moran

Theses and Dissertations

Dawning from well-defined tertiary structure, the active regions of enzymatic proteins exist as specifically tailored electrostatic microenvironments capable of facilitating chemical interaction. The specific influence these charge distributions have on ligand binding dynamics, and their impact on specificity, reactivity, and biological functionality, have yet to be fully understood. A quantitative determination of these intrinsic fields would offer insight towards the mechanistic aspects of protein functionality. This work seeks to investigate the internal molecular electric fields that are present at the oxygen binding site of myoglobin.

Experiments are performed at 1 K on samples located within a glassy matrix, using the …