Circular Dichroism Spectrophotometer

An upgraded circular dichroism spectrometer, the AVIV 62 DS, is supported by the Program. Thermoelectric temperature control enables data collection in a broad range of temperatures and heating/cooling rates. Automated data collection in the far-UV (185-250 nm) and near-UV CD (250-360 nm) can be carried out as a function of wavelength, temperature or time, thus allowing protein secondary and tertiary structural analysis, thermodynamic analysis, and kinetic studies of protein folding/unfolding transitions. Data collection, processing and display are computer-controlled. Software packages LINEQ and ProtCD with a variety of structural data bases are available for the quantitative secondary structural analysis by CD spectral deconvolution.

In addition, we maintain a state-of-the-art AVIV 215 CD spectrometer with an automatic titrator for quantitative analysis of protein conformation, folding/unfolding transitions, and protein-ligand interactions. The fluorescence attachment on this instrument is used to record changes in the intrinsic protein fluorescence or to monitor heat-induced changes in the light scattering in aggregating proteins or lipid-protein complexes.