Quaternary samples section

Cross-linking constrains the conformational flexibility of biopolymers and, as a rule, stabilizes their secondary, tertiary, and quaternary structures against the denaturing effects of high temperatures.29 We used differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) to compare the heat-induced conformational transitions of selected RNase A samples that were characterized in Figure 15.2. A brief introduction to DSC is provided in Section 15.15.1 for those readers unfamiliar with this biophysical method. Trace 1 in Figure 15.3a is the heat absorption... 

The mobile phase in RPC contains water and one or more water-soluble organic solvents. The most useful are, in order of decreasing polarities, acetonitrile, methanol, dioxane, tetrahydrofuran and propanol. By the choice of the type of the organic solvent, selective polar interactions, dipole-dipole, proton-donor or proton-acceptor, with analytes can be either enhanced or suppressed and the selectivity of the separation adjusted. For simplicity, binary mobile pha.ses are used more often than those containing more than one organic solvent in water, as they often make possible an adequate separation of various samples. However, ternary or less often quaternary mobile phases offer advantage of fine-tuning the optimum selectivity of more difficult separations. This is discussed in more detail in Section 1.4.6. 

The mass of a protein can be directly determined by sedimentation equilibrium, in which a sample is centrifuged at relatively low speed so that sedimentation is counterbalanced by diffusion. The sedimentation-equilibrium technique for determining mass is very accurate and can be applied under nondenaturing conditions in which the native quaternary structure of multimeric proteins is preserved. In contrast, SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (Section 4.1.4) provides an estimate of the mass of dissociated polypeptide chains under denaturing conditions. Note that, if we know the mass of the dissociated components of a multimeric protein as determined by SDS-polyacrylamide analysis and the mass of the intact multimeric protein as determined by sedimentation equilibrium analysis, we can determine how many copies of each polypeptide chain is present in the multimeric protein. 

In analysing a sample of curare, probably from the Amazon, King (306) found that the non-quaternary alkaloids made up 38% of the original curare and contained numerous phenolic bases. The two that he isolated and characterized were isomers of the isochondrodendrine series the pharmacologically inactive protocuridine (19b), also obtained by Boehm (189) from curare, and the optically inactive neoprotocuridine (19c) which had weak curarizing activity their stereochemistry has not yet been determined. Cf. also Section I.4.6.2. 

Quaternary amine salts may be titrated with acid by conventional nonaqueous procedures. To be precise, the anion associated with the quaternary is titrated. In the case of halides, mercuric acetate is added to replace free halide ion with easily titratable acetate ion [see Section III] (8,9). Such methods are suitable for analysis of pure samples, which do not contain other salts. A more specific assay of cationic surfactants is the two-phase titration with an anionic surfactant, described in Chapter 16. 

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