Open Access Publication of the Month – Shilpa Mohanakumar (IBI-4) et al.
5 December 2022
To encourage us all to broaden our horizons, each month the Central Library selects one open access publication from the JuSER publications portal to be featured in the newsletter of Forschungszentrum Jülich.
In this month’s open access publication, Shilpa Mohanakumar, Dr. Namkyu Lee, and Prof. Dr. Simone Wiegand (all IBI-4) write about the quantification of biomolecular bonding. The authors establish a connection between the energy released or consumed during a reaction, for example, and the concentration difference formed in a temperature gradient. This is an important step towards understanding non-equilibrium processes, which occur continuously in the human body.
The quantification of biomolecular bonding is an important element in drug discovery and the understanding of molecular disease mechanisms. Isothermal titration calorimetry is a standard method for measuring the heat released or consumed in the course of a molecular binding event. Thermophoresis, i.e. mass transfer in a temperature gradient, is now also used for quantification, as the movement of proteins in a temperature gradient changes once binding takes place with a substance.
In conceptual terms, calorimetry is an equilibrium experiment, while thermophoresis is a non-equilibrium experiment. The publication shows for the first time that an equilibrium variable can be related with the concentration difference.
The open access publication entitled “Complementary Experimental Methods to Obtain Thermodynamic Parameters of Protein Ligand Systems” was published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
JuSER publications database – Complementary Experimental Methods to Obtain Thermodynamic Parameters of Protein Ligand Systems