Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 1, 2026

Novel Techniques for Observing Structural Dynamics of Photoresponsive Liquid Crystals
Published on: May 29, 2018
Measurement of circular dichroism dynamics in a nanosecond temperature-jump experiment
Mai-Thu Khuc1, Lucille Mendonça, Sapna Sharma
1Laboratoire d'Optique et Biosciences, Ecole Polytechnique∕CNRS∕INSERM, 91128 Palaiseau, France.
Abstract:
The use of a fast temperature jump (T-jump) is a very powerful experiment aiming at studying protein denaturation dynamics. However, probing the secondary structure is a difficult challenge and rarely yields quantitative values. We present the technical implementation of far-UV circular dichroism in a nanosecond T-jump experiment and show that this experiment allows us to follow quantitatively the change in the helical fraction of a poly(glutamic acid) peptide during its thermal denaturation with 12 ns time resolution.
Related Concept Videos
¹H NMR of Conformationally Flexible Molecules: Temporal Resolution
¹H NMR of Conformationally Flexible Molecules: Variable-Temperature NMR
Atomic Spectroscopy: Effects of Temperature
At thermal equilibrium, the relative populations of excited and ground state atoms can be estimated using the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution. For example, an increase in temperature from...

