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Biomedical subjects

Ivan L Shulgin

Publications and source records attributed to Ivan L Shulgin.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Simple computer experiments with ordinary ice.

Simple computer experiments in which various fractions of hydrogen bonds (H-bonds) in ice are allowed to break are presented in this paper. First, up to six million water molecules were used to build an artificial piece of ordinary hexagonal ice in the form of a cube, a monolayer, a bilayer, a trilayer, and thicker layers. Then, certain percentages of H-bonds were broken, and the obtained structures were examined. It was found that a large percentage of H-bonds must be broken in order to completely fragment the network of ice into clusters. For a cubic piece of ice, which can be considered bulk ordinary ice, this percentage is equal to 61% H-bonds, a figure also predicted as the threshold of the percolation theory for ice. If, as usually assumed, 13-20% of H-bonds are broken during melting (estimates based on the comparison between the heats of melting and sublimation of ice), the H-bond network of ice is not fragmented and the overwhelming majority of water molecules (>99%) belong to a new, distorted but unbroken network. The percentage of broken H-bonds required for full fragmentation of layers increases with the number of layers and reaches the bulk value of ice for 5-8 layers. This value is consistent with the literature observation that films of water thicker than 20-30 A have properties close to those of the bulk structure.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2006

Effect of salts and organic additives on the solubility of proteins in aqueous solutions.

The goal of this review is to examine the effect of salts and organic additives on the solubility of proteins in aqueous mixed solvents. The focus is on the correlation between the aqueous protein solubility and the osmotic second virial coefficient or the preferential binding parameter. First, several approaches which connect the solubility and the osmotic second virial coefficient are presented. Most of the experimental and theoretical results correlate the solubility and the osmotic second virial coefficient in the presence of salts. The correlation of the aqueous protein solubility with the osmotic second virial coefficient when the cosolvent is an organic component requires additional research. Second, the aqueous protein solubility is correlated with the preferential binding parameter on the basis of a theory developed by the authors of the present review. This theory can predict (i) the salting-in or -out effect of a cosolvent and (ii) the initial slope of the solubility curve. Good agreement was obtained between theoretical predictions and experimental results.

Colloids↗
PubMed2006

The Kirkwood-Buff theory of solutions and the local composition of liquid mixtures.

The present paper is devoted to the local composition of liquid mixtures calculated in the framework of the Kirkwood-Buff theory of solutions. A new method is suggested to calculate the excess (or deficit) number of various molecules around a selected (central) molecule in binary and multicomponent liquid mixtures in terms of measurable macroscopic thermodynamic quantities, such as the derivatives of the chemical potentials with respect to concentrations, the isothermal compressibility, and the partial molar volumes. This method accounts for an inaccessible volume due to the presence of a central molecule and is applied to binary and ternary mixtures. For the ideal binary mixture it is shown that because of the difference in the volumes of the pure components there is an excess (or deficit) number of different molecules around a central molecule. The excess (or deficit) becomes zero when the components of the ideal binary mixture have the same volume. The new method is also applied to methanol + water and 2-propanol + water mixtures. In the case of the 2-propanol + water mixture, the new method, in contrast to the other ones, indicates that clusters dominated by 2-propanol disappear at high alcohol mole fractions, in agreement with experimental observations. Finally, it is shown that the application of the new procedure to the ternary mixture water/protein/cosolvent at infinite dilution of the protein led to almost the same results as the methods involving a reference state.

Journal Article↗
PubMed2005

Preferential hydration and solubility of proteins in aqueous solutions of polyethylene glycol.

This paper is focused on the local composition around a protein molecule in aqueous mixtures containing polyethylene glycol (PEG) and the solubility of proteins in water+PEG mixed solvents. Experimental data from literature regarding the preferential binding parameter were used to calculate the excesses (or deficits) of water and PEG in the vicinity of beta-lactoglobulin, bovine serum albumin, lysozyme, chymotrypsinogen and ribonuclease A. It was concluded that the protein molecule is preferentially hydrated in all cases (for all proteins and PEGs investigated). The excesses of water and deficits of PEG in the vicinity of a protein molecule could be explained by a steric exclusion mechanism, i.e. the large difference in the sizes of water and PEG molecules. The solubility of different proteins in water+PEG mixed solvent was expressed in terms of the preferential binding parameter. The slope of the logarithm of protein (lysozyme, beta-lactoglobulin and bovine serum albumin) solubility versus the PEG concentration could be predicted on the basis of experimental data regarding the preferential binding parameter. For all the cases considered (various proteins, various PEGs molecular weights and various pHs), our theory predicted that PEG acts as a salting-out agent, conclusion in full agreement with experimental observations. The predicted slopes were compared with experimental values and while in some cases good agreement was found, in other cases the agreement was less satisfactory. Because the established equation is a rigorous thermodynamic one, the disagreement might occur because the experimental results used for the solubility and/or the preferential binding parameter do not correspond to thermodynamic equilibrium.

Models, Theoretical↗
PubMed2005

Relationship between preferential interaction of a protein in an aqueous mixed solvent and its solubility.

The present paper is devoted to the derivation of a relation between the preferential solvation of a protein in a binary aqueous solution and its solubility. The preferential binding parameter, which is a measure of the preferential solvation (or preferential hydration) is expressed in terms of the derivative of the protein activity coefficient with respect to the water mole fraction, the partial molar volume of protein at infinite dilution and some characteristics of the protein-free mixed solvent. This expression is used as the starting point in the derivation of a relationship between the preferential binding parameter and the solubility of a protein in a binary aqueous solution. The obtained expression is used in two different ways: (1) to produce a simple criterion for the salting-in or salting-out by various cosolvents on the protein solubility in water, (2) to derive equations which predict the solubility of a protein in a binary aqueous solution in terms of the preferential binding parameter. The solubilities of lysozyme in aqueous sodium chloride solutions (pH=4.5 and 7.0), in aqueous sodium acetate (pH=8.3) and in aqueous magnesium chloride (pH=4.1) solutions are predicted in terms of the preferential binding parameter without any adjustable parameter. The results are compared with experiment, and for aqueous sodium chloride mixtures the agreement is excellent, for aqueous sodium acetate and magnesium chloride mixtures the agreement is only satisfactory.

Chemical Phenomena↗
PubMed2005

A protein molecule in an aqueous mixed solvent: fluctuation theory outlook.

In the present paper a procedure to calculate the properties of proteins in aqueous mixed solvents, particularly the excesses of the constituents of the mixed solvent near the protein molecule and the preferential binding parameters, is suggested. Expressions for the Kirkwood-Buff integrals in ternary mixtures and for the preferential binding parameter were derived and used to calculate various properties of infinitely dilute proteins in aqueous mixed solvents. The derived expressions and experimental information regarding the partial molar volumes and the preferential binding parameters were used to calculate the excesses (deficits) of water and cosolvent (in comparison with the bulk concentrations of protein-free mixed solvent) in the vicinity of ribonuclease A, ribonuclease T1, and lysozyme molecules. The calculations showed that water was in excess in the vicinity of ribonuclease A for water/glycerol and water/trehalose mixtures, and the cosolvent urea was in excess in the vicinity of ribonuclease T1 and lysozyme. The derivative of the activity coefficient of the protein with respect to the mole fraction of water was also calculated. This derivative was negative for the water/glycerol and water/trehalose mixed solvents and positive for the water/urea mixture. The mixture of lysozyme in the water/urea solvent is of particular interest, because the lysozyme at pH 7.0 is in its native state up to 9.3M urea, while at pH 2.0 it is denaturated between 2.5 and 5M and higher concentrations of urea. Our results demonstrated a striking similarity in the hydration of lysozyme at both pHs. It is worthwhile to note that the excesses of urea were only weakly composition dependent on both cases.

Dose-Response Relationship, Drug↗
PubMed2005

Treatment of dilute clusters of methanol and water by ab initio quantum mechanical calculations.

Large molecular clusters can be considered as intermediate states between gas and condensed phases, and information about them can help us understand condensed phases. In this paper, ab initio quantum mechanical methods have been used to examine clusters formed of methanol and water molecules. The main goal was to obtain information about the intermolecular interactions and the structure of methanol/water clusters at the molecular level. The large clusters (CH(4)O...(H(2)O)(12) and H(2)O...(CH(4)O)(10)) containing one molecule of one component (methanol or water) and many (12, 10) molecules of the other component were considered. Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) was used in the calculations. Several representative cluster geometries were optimized, and nearest-neighbor interaction energies were calculated for the geometries obtained in the first step. The results of the calculations were compared to the available experimental information regarding the liquid methanol/water mixtures and to the molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations, and good agreement was found. For the CH(4)O...(H(2)O)(12) cluster, it was shown that the molecules of water can be subdivided into two classes: (i) H bonded to the central methanol molecule and (ii) not H bonded to the central methanol molecule. As expected, these two classes exhibited striking energy differences. Although they are located almost the same distance from the carbon atom of the central methanol molecule, they possess very different intermolecular interaction energies with the central molecule. The H bonding constitutes a dominant factor in the hydration of methanol in dilute aqueous solutions. For the H(2)O...(CH(4)O)(10) cluster, it was shown that the central molecule of water has almost three H bonds with the methanol molecules; this result differs from those in the literature that concluded that the average number of H bonds between a central water molecule and methanol molecules in dilute solutions of water in methanol is about two, with the water molecules being incorporated into the chains of methanol. In contrast, the present predictions revealed that the central water molecule is not incorporated into a chain of methanol molecules, but it can be the center of several (2-3) chains of methanol molecules. The molecules of methanol, which are not H bonded to the central water molecule, have characteristics similar to those of the methane molecules around a central water molecule in the H(2)O...(CH(4))(10) cluster. The ab initio quantum mechanical methods employed in this paper have provided detailed information about the H bonds in the clusters investigated. In particular, they provided full information about two types of H bonds between water and methanol molecules (in which the water or the methanol molecule is the proton donor), including information about their energies and lengths. The average numbers of the two types of H bonds in the CH(4)O...(H(2)O)(12) and H(2)O...(CH(4)O)(10) clusters have been calculated. Such information could hardly be obtained with the simulation methods.

Computer Simulation↗