Dynamics of confined water molecules

Suppressed terahertz dynamics of water confined in nanometer gaps

Nanoconfined waters exhibit low static permittivity mainly due to interfacial effects that span about one nanometer. The characteristic length scale may be much longer in the terahertz (THz) regime where long-range collective dynamics occur; however, the THz dynamics have been largely unexplored because of the lack of a robust platform. Here, we use metallic loop nanogaps to sharply enhance light-matter interactions and precisely measure real and imaginary THz refractive indices of nanoconfined water at gap widths ranging from 2 to 20 nanometers, spanning mostly interfacial waters all the way to quasi-bulk waters. We find that, in addition to the well-known interfacial effect, the confinement effect also contributes substantially to the decrease in the complex refractive indices of the nanoconfined water by cutting off low-energy vibrational modes, even at gap widths as large as 10 nanometers. Our findings provide valuable insights into the collective dynamics of water molecules which is crucial to understanding water-mediated processes.

Water-induced strong isotropic MXene-bridged graphene sheets for electrochemical energy storage

Graphene and two-dimensional transition metal carbides and/or nitrides (MXenes) are important materials for making flexible energy storage devices because of their electrical and mechanical properties. It remains a challenge to assemble nanoplatelets of these materials at room temperature into in-plane isotropic, free-standing sheets. Using nanoconfined water-induced basal-plane alignment and covalent and π-π interplatelet bridging, we fabricated Ti3C2Tx MXene-bridged graphene sheets at room temperature with isotropic in-plane tensile strength of 1.87 gigapascals and moduli of 98.7 gigapascals. The in-plane room temperature electrical conductivity reached 1423 siemens per centimeter, and volumetric specific capacity reached 828 coulombs per cubic centimeter. This nanoconfined water-induced alignment likely provides an important approach for making other aligned macroscopic assemblies of two-dimensional nanoplatelets.

Tracking water dimers in ambient nanocapsules by vibrational spectroscopy

Nanoconfined few-molecule water clusters are invaluable systems to study fundamental aspects of hydrogen bonding. Unfortunately, most experiments on water clusters must be performed at cryogenic temperatures. Probing water clusters in noncryogenic systems is however crucial to understand the behavior of confined water in atmospheric or biological settings, but such systems usually require either complex synthesis and/or introduce many confounding external bonds to the clusters. Here, we show that combining Raman spectroscopy with the molecular nanocapsule cucurbituril is a powerful technique to sequester and analyze water clusters in ambient conditions. We observe sharp peaks in vibrational spectra arising from a single rigid confined water dimer. The high resolution and rich information in these vibrational spectra allow us to track specific isotopic exchanges inside the water dimer, verified with density-functional theory and kinetic population modeling. We showcase the versatility of such molecular nanocapsules by tracking water cluster vibrations through systematic changes in confinement size, in temperatures up to 120° C, and in their chemical environment.

Enhanced Water Evaporation from Å-Scale Graphene Nanopores

Enhancing the kinetics of liquid-vapor transition from nanoscale confinements is an attractive strategy for developing evaporation and separation applications. The ultimate limit of confinement for evaporation is an atom thick interface hosting angstrom-scale nanopores. Herein, using a combined experimental/computational approach, we report highly enhanced water evaporation rates when angstrom sized oxygen-functionalized graphene nanopores are placed at the liquid-vapor interface. The evaporation flux increases for the smaller nanopores with an enhancement up to 35-fold with respect to the bare liquid-vapor interface. Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that oxygen-functionalized nanopores render rapid rotational and translational dynamics to the water molecules due to a reduced and short-lived water-water hydrogen bonding. The potential of mean force (PMF) reveals that the free energy barrier for water evaporation decreases in the presence of nanopores at the atomically thin interface, which further explains the enhancement in evaporation flux. These findings can enable the development of energy-efficient technologies relying on water evaporation.

High cubicity of D2O ice inside spherical nanopores of MIL-101(Cr) framework: a neutron diffraction study

Although cubic ice (ice I_c) is considered to be an important phase of water that impacts ice cloud formation in the Earth's upper atmosphere, its properties have not been studied to the same extent as those of hexagonal ice (ice I_h). This is because pristine ice I_c is not formed in simple laboratory conditions. Ice I_c formed in ambient conditions has a stacking disordered array of both hexagonal and cubic-structured hydrogen-bonded water molecules. It is therefore an active area of research to find ways of developing stacking disorder-free pure ice I_c. We demonstrate the evolution of almost pure ice I_c structure within the spherical nanopores of a hydrostable Cr-based metal-organic framework MIL-101(Cr) with an average pore size of 1 nm by low-temperature neutron diffraction study on D₂O. It is observed that at temperatures below 230 K a fraction of liquid D₂O transforms into ice and more than 94% of ice crystals evolved inside the pore are cubic in shape. This is a significantly high fraction of ice I_c formed under simple conditions inside the spherical pores of a Cr-based MOF. It is also observed that upon increasing the temperature, i_ce I_c remains stable until its melting point, without being transformed into ice I_h. This observation is in contrast to our previous observation of ice structure in the 2D cylindrical nanopores of MCM-41, where H₂O ice after creeping out from the cylindrical channel was seen to be dominated by hexagonal shape. In the present study, the D₂O molecules were confined into well-defined spherical nanopores, which hindered the growth of crystals above a certain size, thus minimizing the stacking disordered array. Nanoconfinement of water inside uniform spherical pores is therefore a promising method for the evolution of a significantly large fraction of cubic ice by minimizing the stacking disorder. This finding may open up the possibility of forming ice I_c with 100% cubicity under simple laboratory conditions, which will help in exploring the microphysics of ice cloud formation in the upper atmosphere.

Molecular heterogeneity in aqueous cosolvent systems

Aqueous cosolvent systems (ACoSs) are mixtures of small polar molecules such as amides, alcohols, dimethyl sulfoxide, or ions in water. These liquids have been the focus of fundamental studies due to their complex intermolecular interactions as well as their broad applications in chemistry, medicine, and materials science. ACoSs are fully miscible at the macroscopic level but exhibit nanometer-scale spatial heterogeneity. ACoSs have recently received renewed attention within the chemical physics community as model systems to explore the relationship between intermolecular interactions and microscopic liquid-liquid phase separation. In this perspective, we provide an overview of ACoS spatial segregation, dynamic heterogeneity, and multiscale relaxation dynamics. We describe emerging approaches to characterize liquid microstructure, H-bond networks, and dynamics using modern experimental tools combined with molecular dynamics simulations and network-based analysis techniques.

Against all odds-the persistent popularity of homeopathy

The use of homeopathy is remarkably popular. Popularity, however, is not an arbiter in a scientific discourse. In fact, the assumptions underlying homeopathy violate fundamental laws of nature. Homeopathy does not have any explanatory power and fails other criteria established for a scientific approach. Two large-scale efforts have recently documented that in spite of a plethora of clinical trials there is no evidence that homeopathic remedies have any therapeutic effect, which goes beyond that of a placebo. Relaxed regulations and lack of scientific literacy and of health education allow for continuous thriving of homeopathy. While the tide may be changing on the regulatory side, health education of the general public is presumably more important to support informed decision making by patients. Otherwise, the responsible patient, who is posited to decide on the medical choices, remains a convenient legal fiction.

Water dynamics in hydrated amorphous materials: a molecular dynamics study of the effects of dehydration in amorphous calcium carbonate

Amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) is often a critical transient phase in the formation of crystalline phases of CaCO₃via dehydration of hydrated ACC. The behavior of the water molecules plays a pivotal role in this transformation. We report here the dynamics of water molecules in ACC at hydration levels from CaCO₃·1H₂O to CaCO₃·0.25H₂O using molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Due to the presence of highly hydrophilic Ca²⁺ and the strong H-bond acceptor CO₃^2-, most of the water molecules in our simulations have restricted translational and orientational dynamics. These are referred here as 'slow water'. However, a small fraction of them show high diffusivity at all hydration states and are referred here as 'fast water'. The computed diffusion coefficients of the slow waters, as extrapolated from simulation results, yield diffusion distances of the order of μm on the 1 hour time scale, consistent with rapid dehydration of ACC nano-particles in the laboratory. We correlate our fast waters with the water molecules in the percolating water-rich, Ca²⁺-deficient nano-pores in the structure of Goodwin et al. [Chem. Mater., 2010, 22, 3197], obtained by analysis of X-ray scattering data, and our slow waters with those in the Ca²⁺-rich volumes with less water in their model. The fast waters can be considered to be free rotors on the ns time scale and have orders of magnitude shorter rotational relaxation times than the slow waters.

Dynamics of Water in Gemini Surfactant-Based Lyotropic Liquid Crystals

The dynamics of water confined to nanometer-sized domains is important in a variety of applications ranging from proton exchange membranes to crowding effects in biophysics. In this work, we study the dynamics of water in gemini surfactant-based lyotropic liquid crystals (LLCs) using molecular dynamics simulations. These systems have well characterized morphologies, for example, hexagonal, gyroid, and lamellar, and the surfaces of the confining regions can be controlled by modifying the headgroup of the surfactants. This allows one to study the effect of topology, functionalization, and interfacial curvature on the dynamics of confined water. Through analysis of the translational diffusion and rotational relaxation, we conclude that the hydration level and resulting confinement length scale is the predominate determiner of the rates of water dynamics, and other effects, namely, surface functionality and curvature, are largely secondary. This novel analysis of the water dynamics in these LLC systems provides an important comparison for previous studies of water dynamics in lipid bilayers and reverse micelles.

Confined Water as Model of Supercooled Water

Water in confined geometries has obvious relevance in biology, geology, and other areas where the material properties are strongly dependent on the amount and behavior of water in these types of materials. Another reason to restrict the size of water domains by different types of geometrical confinements has been the possibility to study the structural and dynamical behavior of water in the deeply supercooled regime (e.g., 150-230 K at ambient pressure), where bulk water immediately crystallizes to ice. In this paper we give a short review of studies with this particular goal. However, from these studies it is also clear that the interpretations of the experimental data are far from evident. Therefore, we present three main interpretations to explain the experimental data, and we discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Unfortunately, none of the proposed scenarios is able to predict all the observations for supercooled and glassy bulk water, indicating that either the structural and dynamical alterations of confined water are too severe to make predictions for bulk water or the differences in how the studied water has been prepared (applied cooling rate, resulting density of the water, etc.) are too large for direct and quantitative comparisons.

High-resolution neutron and X-ray diffraction room-temperature studies of an H-FABP-oleic acid complex: study of the internal water cluster and ligand binding by a transferred multipolar electron-density distribution

Crystal diffraction data of heart fatty acid binding protein (H-FABP) in complex with oleic acid were measured at room temperature with high-resolution X-ray and neutron protein crystallography (0.98 and 1.90 Å resolution, respectively). These data provided very detailed information about the cluster of water molecules and the bound oleic acid in the H-FABP large internal cavity. The jointly refined X-ray/neutron structure of H-FABP was complemented by a transferred multipolar electron-density distribution using the parameters of the ELMAMII library. The resulting electron density allowed a precise determination of the electrostatic potential in the fatty acid (FA) binding pocket. Bader's quantum theory of atoms in molecules was then used to study interactions involving the internal water molecules, the FA and the protein. This approach showed H⋯H contacts of the FA with highly conserved hydrophobic residues known to play a role in the stabilization of long-chain FAs in the binding cavity. The determination of water hydrogen (deuterium) positions allowed the analysis of the orientation and electrostatic properties of the water molecules in the very ordered cluster. As a result, a significant alignment of the permanent dipoles of the water molecules with the protein electrostatic field was observed. This can be related to the dielectric properties of hydration layers around proteins, where the shielding of electrostatic interactions depends directly on the rotational degrees of freedom of the water molecules in the interface.

Structure and dynamics of water molecules confined in triglyceride oils

Water molecules confined in triglyceride oil form specific hydrogen-bonded structures involving the oil carbonyl groups.

Bioinspired super-wettability from fundamental research to practical applications

Engineered wettability is a traditional, yet key issue in surface science and attracts tremendous interest in solving large-scale practical problems. Recently, different super-wettability systems have been discovered in both nature and experiments. In this Review we present three types of super-wettability, including the three-dimensional, two-dimensional, and one-dimensional material surfaces. By combining different super-wettabilities, novel interfacial functional systems could be generated and integrated into devices for use in tackling current and the future problems including resources, energy, environment, and health.

Size effects on water adsorbed on hydrophobic probes at the nanometric scale

Molecular dynamics simulations of liquid water at ambient conditions, adsorbed at the external walls of (n,n) single-walled armchair carbon nanotubes have been performed for n = 5, 9, 12. The comparison with the case of water adsorbed on graphene has also been included. The analysis of Helmholtz free energies reveals qualitatively different ranges of thermodynamical stability, eventually starting at a given threshold surface density. We observed that, in the framework of the force field considered here, water does not wet graphene nor (12,12) tubes, but it can coat thinner tubes such as (9,9) and (5,5), which indicates that the width of the carbon nanotube plays a role on wetting. On the other hand, density profiles, orientational distributions of water, and hydrogen-bond populations indicate significant changes of structure of water for the different surfaces. Further, we computed self-diffusion of water and spectral densities of water and carbon molecules, which again revealed different qualitative behavior of interfacial water depending on the size of the nanotube. The crossover size corresponds to tube diameters of around 1 nm.

Dynamics of water confined in reversed micelles: multidimensional vibrational spectroscopy study

Here we perform a comprehensive study of ultrafast molecular and vibrational dynamics of water confined in small reversed micelles (RMs). The molecular picture is elucidated with two-dimensional infrared (2D IR) spectroscopy of water OH stretch vibrations and molecular dynamics simulations, bridged by theoretical calculations of linear and 2D IR vibrational spectra. To investigate the effects of intermolecular coupling, experiments and modeling are performed for isotopically diluted (HDO in D2O) and undiluted (H2O) water. We put a separation of water inside RMs into two subensembles (water-bound and surfactant-bound molecules), observed by many before, on a solid theoretical basis. Water molecules fully attached to the lipid interface ("shell" water) are decoupled from one another and from the central water nanopool ("core" water). The environmental fluctuations are largely "frozen" for the shell water, while the core waters demonstrate much faster dynamics but still not as fast as in the bulk case. A substantial nanoconfinement effect on the dynamics of the core water is observed after disentanglement of the shell water contribution, which is fully confirmed by the simulations of 2D IR spectra. Current results provide new insights into interaction between biological objects like membranes or proteins with the surrounding aqueous bath, and highlight peculiarities in vibrational energy redistribution near the lipid surface.

Direct observation of self-assembled chain-like water structures in a nanoscopic water meniscus

Sawtooth-like oscillatory forces generated by water molecules confined between two oxidized silicon surfaces were observed using a cantilever-based optical interfacial force microscope when the two surfaces approached each other in ambient environments. The humidity-dependent oscillatory amplitude and periodicity were 3-12 nN and 3-4 water diameters, respectively. Half of each period was matched with a freely jointed chain model, possibly suggesting that the confined water behaved like a bundle of water chains. The analysis also indicated that water molecules self-assembled to form chain-like structures in a nanoscopic meniscus between two hydrophilic surfaces in air. From the friction force data measured simultaneously, the viscosity of the chain-like water was estimated to be between 10(8) and 10(10) times greater than that of bulk water. The suggested chain-like structure resolves many unexplained properties of confined water at the nanometer scale, thus dramatically improving the understanding of a variety of water systems in nature.

High pressure-high temperature decomposition of γ-cyclotrimethylene trinitramine

Decomposition of γ-cyclotrimethylene trinitramine (γ-RDX) under high pressure-high temperature conditions was examined to elucidate the reactive behavior of RDX crystals. Vibrational spectroscopy measurements were obtained for single crystals in a diamond anvil cell (DAC) at pressures from 6 to 12 GPa and temperatures up to 600 K. Global decomposition rates, activation energies, and activation volumes at several pressures and temperatures below the P-T locus for the γ-RDX decomposition were obtained. Similar to ε-RDX, but in contrast to α-RDX, we found that pressure decelerates the decomposition of γ-RDX. The decomposition deceleration with pressure in the γ-phase can be attributed to pressure-inhibiting bond homolysis step(s). The main decomposition species were identified as N(2)O, CO(2), and H(2)O, in accord with the species reported for the α-phase decomposition at high pressures. This work complements previous studies on RDX at HP-HT conditions and provides comprehensive results on the reactive behavior of γ-RDX; the γ-phase plays a key role in RDX decomposition at P-T conditions relevant to shock wave initiation.

Dynamics and energetics of hydrophobically confined water

The effects of water confined in regions between self-assembling entities is relevant to numerous contexts such as macromolecular association, protein folding, protein-ligand association, and nanomaterials self-assembly. Thus assessing the impact of confined water, and the ability of current modeling techniques to capture the salient features of confined water is important and timely. We present molecular dynamics simulation results investigating the effect of confined water on qualitative features of potentials of mean force describing the free energetics of self-assembly of large planar hydrophobic plates. We consider several common explicit water models including the TIP3P, TIP4P, SPC/E, TIP4P-FQ, and SWM4-NDP, the latter two being polarizable models. Examination of the free energies for filling and unfilling the volume confined between the two plates (both in the context of average number of confined water molecules and "depth" of occupancy) suggests TIP4P-FQ water molecules generally occupy the confined volume at separation distances larger than observed for other models under the same conditions. The connection between this tendency of TIP4P-FQ water and the lack of a pronounced barrier in the potential of mean force for plate-plate association in TIP4P-FQ water is explored by artificially, but systematically, populating the confined volume with TIP4P-FQ water at low plate-plate separation distances. When the critical separation distance [denoting the crossover from an unoccupied (dry) confined interior to a filled (wet) interior] for TIP4P-FQ is reduced by 0.5 Å using this approach, a barrier is observed; we rationalize this effect based on increased resistant forces introduced by confined water molecules at these low separations. We also consider the dynamics of water molecules in the confined region between the hydrophobes. We find that the TIP4P-FQ water model exhibits nonbulklike dynamics, with enhanced lateral diffusion relative to bulk. This is consistent with the reduced intermolecular water-water interaction indicated by a decreased molecular dipole moment in the interplate region. Analysis of velocity autocorrelation functions and associated power spectra indicate that the interplate region for TIP4P-FQ at a plate separation of 14.4 Å approaches characteristics of the pure water liquid-vapor interface. This is in stark contrast to the other water models (including the polarizable SWM4-NDP model).

Theoretic, experimental, clinical bases of the water oscillator hypothesis in near-infrared photobiomodulation

The objective of this review is to propose and document a role for the water oscillator in near-infrared (NIR) photobiomodulation. Greater understanding of the role of the water oscillator may add to a more-coherent description of central effects of NIR light on redox centers and key transmembrane enzymes such as cytochrome c oxidase (CcO). In addition, water provides a complementary pathway for absorption and transportation of NIR energy in photobiomodulation. Because of its unexpected potential, we propose terming it the "water oscillator paradox." Photobiologic mechanisms involved in the treatment of complex diseases are discussed in light of the present state of the art.

Analysis of water in confined geometries and at interfaces

The properties of water depend on its extended hydrogen bond network and the continual picosecond-time scale structural evolution of the network. Water molecules in confined environments with pools a few nanometers in diameter or at interfaces undergo hydrogen bond structural dynamics that differ drastically from the dynamics they undergo in bulk water. Orientational motions of water require hydrogen bond network rearrangement. Therefore, observations of orientational relaxation in nanoscopic water systems provide information about the influence of confinement and interfaces on hydrogen bond dynamics. Ultrafast infrared polarization- and wavelength-selective pump-probe experiments can measure the orientational relaxation of water and distinguish water at an interface from water removed from an interface. These experiments can be applied to water in reverse micelles (spherical nanopools). The results provide quantitative determination of the dynamics of water as a function of the size and nature of the confining structure.

Molecular dynamics simulations of supercritical water confined within a carbon-slit pore

We report the results of a series of molecular dynamics simulations of water inside a carbon-slit pore at supercritical conditions. A range of densities corresponding from liquid (0.66gcm;{-3}) to gas environments (0.08gcm;{-3}) at the supercritical temperature of 673K were considered. Our findings are compared with previous studies of liquid water confined in graphene nanochannels at ambient and high temperatures, and indicate that the microscopic structure of water evolves from hydrogen bond networks characteristic of hot dense liquids to looser arrangements where the dominant units are water monomers and dimers. Water permittivity was found to be very small at low densities, with a tendency to grow with density and to reach typical values of unconfined supercritical water at 0.66gcm;{-3}) . In supercritical conditions, the residence time of water at interfaces is roughly similar to that of water in the central regions of the slabs, if the size of the considered region is taken into account. That time span is long enough to compute dynamical properties such as diffusion or spectral densities. Water diffusion in supercritical states is much faster at low densities, and it is produced in such a way that, at interfaces, translational diffusion is mainly produced along planes parallel to the carbon walls. Spectral frequency shifts depend on several factors, being temperature and density effects the most relevant. However, we can observe corrections due to confinement, important both at the graphene interface and in the central region of the water slab.

A first principles theoretical study of vibrational spectral diffusion and hydrogen bond dynamics in aqueous ionic solutions: D2O in hydration shells of Cl(-) ions

A theoretical study of vibrational spectral diffusion and hydrogen bond dynamics in aqueous ionic solutions is presented from first principles without employing any empirical potential models. The present calculations are based on ab initio molecular dynamics for trajectory generation and wavelet analysis of the simulated trajectories for time dependent frequency calculations. Results are obtained for two different deuterated aqueous solutions: the first one is a relatively dilute solution of a single Cl(-) ion and the second one is a concentrated solution of NaCl ( approximately 3M) dissolved in liquid D(2)O. It is found that the frequencies of OD bonds in the anion hydration shell, i.e., those which are hydrogen bonded to the chloride ion, have a higher stretch frequency than those in the bulk water. Also, on average, the frequencies of hydration shell OD modes are found to increase with increase in the anion-water hydrogen bond distance. On the dynamical side, when the vibrational spectral diffusion is calculated exclusively for the hydration shell water molecules in the first solution, the dynamics reveals three time scales: a short-time relaxation ( approximately 200 fs) corresponding to the dynamics of intact ion-water hydrogen bonds, a slower relaxation ( approximately 3 ps) corresponding to the lifetimes of chloride ion-water hydrogen bonds, and another longer-time constant ( approximately 20 ps) corresponding to the escape dynamics of water from the anion hydration shell. Existence of such three time scales for hydration shell water molecules was also reported earlier for water containing a single iodide ion using classical molecular dynamics [B. Nigro et al., J. Phys. Chem. A 110, 11237 (2006)]. Hence, the present study confirms the basic results of this earlier work using a different methodology. However, when the vibrational spectral diffusion is calculated over all the OD modes, only two time scales of approximately 150 fs and approximately 2.7 ps are found without the slowest component of approximately 20 ps. This is likely because of the very small weight that the hydration shell water molecules carry to the overall spectral diffusion in the solution containing a single ion. For the concentrated solution also, the slowest component of approximately 20 ps is not found in the spectral diffusion of all water molecules because a distinct separation between the hydration shell and bulk water in terms of their stretch frequencies does not hold at this high concentration regime. The present first principles results are compared with those of the available experiments and classical simulations.

Vibrational spectral diffusion and hydrogen bond dynamics in heavy water from first principles

We present a first-principles theoretical study of vibrational spectral diffusion and hydrogen bond dynamics in heavy water without using any empirical model potentials. The calculations are based on ab initio molecular dynamics simulations for trajectory generation and a time series analysis using the wavelet method for frequency calculations. It is found that, in deuterated water, although a one-to-one relation does not exist between the instantaneous frequency of an OD bond and the distance of its associated hydrogen bond, such a relation does hold on average. The dynamics of spectral diffusion is investigated by means of frequency-time correlation and spectral hole dynamics calculations. Both of these functions are found to have a short-time decay with a time scale of approximately 100 fs corresponding to dynamics of intact hydrogen bonds and a slower long-time decay with a time constant of approximately 2 ps corresponding to lifetimes of hydrogen bonds. The connection of the slower time scale to the dynamics of local structural relaxation is also discussed. The dynamics of hydrogen bond making is shown to have a rather fast time scale of approximately 100 fs; hence, it can also contribute to the short-time dynamics of spectral diffusion. A damped oscillation is also found at around 150-200 fs, which is shown to have come from underdamped intermolecular vibrations of a hydrogen-bonded water pair. Such assignments are confirmed by independent calculations of power spectra of intermolecular motion and hydrogen bond kinetics using the population correlation function formalism. The details of the time constants of frequency correlations and spectral shifts are found to depend on the frequencies of chosen OD bonds and are analyzed in terms of the dynamics of hydrogen bonds of varying strengths and also of free non-hydrogen-bonded OD groups.

Ultrafast anisotropy dynamics of water molecules dissolved in acetonitrile

Infrared pump-probe experiments are performed on isolated H(2)O molecules diluted in acetonitrile in the spectral region of the OH stretching vibration. The large separation between water molecules excludes intermolecular interactions, while acetonitrile as a solvent provides substantial hydrogen bonding. Intramolecular coupling between symmetric and asymmetric modes results in the anisotropy decay to the frequency-dependent values of approximately 0-0.2 with a 0.2 ps time constant. The experimental data are consistent with a theoretical model that includes intramolecular coupling, anharmonicity, and environmental fluctuations. Our results demonstrate that intramolecular processes are essential for the H(2)O stretching mode relaxation and therefore can compete with the intermolecular energy transfer in bulk water.

Hydration of a hydrophobic cavity and its functional role: a simulation study of human interleukin-1beta

Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that the hydrophobic cavity in human cytokine Interleukin-1beta is hydrated and can dynamically accommodate between one and four water molecules. These waters have residence times >> 500 ps and can give rise to detectable NOEs, in agreement with NMR observations of Ernst et al. (Science 1995; 267:1813-1817). The waters also display high positional disorder within the cavity, which explains why they have not been resolved crystallographically. The average distribution of water molecules over time within the cavity matches well the low resolution electron density extracted by Yu et al. (Proc Natl Acad Sci 1999; 96:103-108). The water molecules hydrate the hydrophobic cavity preferentially as complex clusters. These clusters result from a combination of hydrogen bonds between the waters and stabilizing interactions between the waters and aromatic rings forming the cavity. Free energy estimates suggest that it takes 4-waters to hydrate the cavity in a thermodynamically stable manner leading to a gain in free energy of transfer from bulk of approximately approximately 3.6 kcal/mol. This arises from the existence of the water clusters in multiple hydrogen bonded states. In addition, the waters are found to migrate either individually or as clusters out of the cavity through several pathways. The upper limit for one-dimensional diffusion of the waters within the protein matrix is 4 A/ps (relative to 6 A/ps for bulk). Simulations reveal pathways in addition to those identified crystallographically, with motions controlled by the rotations of sidechains. We find that only when the hydrophobic cavity is hydrated, do correlated motions couple distant sites with the sites that make contact with the receptor and this data partly offers an explanation of experimental mutagenesis data. Simulations, together with recent observations based on mutagenesis by Heidary et al. (J Mol Biol 2005; 353:1187-1198) that hydrogen bond networks couple motions across long distances in interleukin-1beta, lead us to hypothesize that the hydration of the cavity (conserved across mammals) can thermodynamically enhance hydrogen bond networks to enable coupling across long distances by acting as a plug and this in turn enables a kinetic control of the rate of transmission of signals.

Dielectric Spectroscopy of Hydrogen Bond Dynamics and Microheterogenity of Water + Dioxane Mixtures

Mixtures of water or D2O + 1,4-dioxane (DX) have been studied at 25 degrees C by dielectric relaxation spectroscopy over a wide range of frequencies (0.2 < or = nu/GHz < or = 89) for DX mole fractions 0 < or = x2 < or = 0.67. The spectra were best fitted by the sum of two Debye terms. The slower process was assigned to the cooperative relaxation of the hydrogen-bond network of water, whereas the faster mode reflects the dynamics of H2O molecules in a DX-rich environment. Analysis of the relaxation parameters revealed a largely microheterogeneous structure of the mixtures. The marked slowing-down of the cooperative mode on addition of DX is ascribed to the reduction of available H-bond acceptor sites and geometrical constraints on the H2O molecules in the water-rich regions.