IETS with Applications to Biology and Surface Physics

Abstract

Applications of inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy to the study of biological molecules will be reviewed. Experiments include work on amino acids, purine and pyridine bases, nucleosides, nucleotides, DNA, RNA, proteins and other selected compounds. Detailed studies of mononucleotides using a series of derivatives with selected bases have established that the tunneling spectra resolve small differences in chemical structure as well as clearly distinguishing different bases. The technique has also been extended to polynucleotides and may be of help in sequence studies. Applications include studies on ultraviolet radiation damage and a series of results on bases, mononucleotides, and polynucleotides will be prepared. Results and problems associated with applying the tunneling technique to the full DNA molecule and other large molecules will also be analyzed. Applications to other relevant materials such as long chain fatty acids will also be discussed

Work supported by the U.S. Energy Research and Development Administration Contract E-(40-l)-3105 and National Science Foundation Grant GB3481.