Hydration effects on thermal transitions and molecular mobility in Xanthan gum polysaccharides

In this work, the xanthan gum (XG) polysaccharide is studied over a wide range of temperatures and water fractions 0 ≤ hw ≤ 0.70 (on a wet basis) by employing differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and broadband dielectric spectroscopy (BDS). The investigation reveals that the critical water fraction for ice formation is about 0.35. Glass transition temperature (Tg) was determined through calorimetry experiments for all the samples studied. Water acts as a strong plasticizer, i.e., decreasing Tg, for water fractions up to about 0.35. A secondary (local) relaxation process is recorded in both dry and hydrated samples, which is sensitive to the presence of water molecules. This fact indicates that this process originates due to the orientation of small polar groups of the side chain, or/and due to the local main chain dynamics. Two types of long-range charge transport processes were resolved. The first is related to the conductive paths being formed via bulk-like ice structures (at high hydration levels), whereas the second can be attributed to proton mobility via the hydrogen bond (HB) network of non-freezing water existing in XG. Interestingly, this process is exactly the same in all the hydrated samples with hw > 0.25. With respect to the sample with hw = 0.27, a Vogel-Tammann-Fulcher (VTF)-like polarization process has also been recorded which seems to be related to long-range charge mobility via interconnected water clusters. As far as we are aware, this is the first time that XG is studied in terms of glass transition and molecular mobility over a wide range of hydration levels combining DSC and BDS techniques.

Anticancer drug impact on DNA – a study by neutron spectroscopy coupled with synchrotron-based FTIR and EXAFS

Complementary information on drug–DNA interplay has been achieved for Pt/Pd anticancer agents, by a combined QENS, SR-FTIR-ATR and EXAFS approach.

Water Collective Dynamics in Whole Photosynthetic Green Algae as Affected by Protein Single Mutation

In the context of the importance of water molecules for protein function/dynamics relationship, the role of water collective dynamics in Chlamydomonas green algae carrying both native and mutated photosynthetic proteins has been investigated by neutron Brillouin scattering spectroscopy. Results show that single point genetic mutation may notably affect collective density fluctuations in hydrating water providing important insight on the transmission of information possibly correlated to biological functionality. In particular, we highlight that the damping factor of the excitations is larger in the native compared to the mutant algae as a signature of a different plasticity and structure of the hydrogen bond network.