The Ability of Trimethylamine N-Oxide to Resist Pressure Induced Structural Perturbation of Water

DOI

Trimethylamine N-Oxide (TMAO) is thought to have the extraordinary ability of allowing organisms to adapt to extreme environments of high pressure, the most famous example being the adaptation of snailfish to different depths of the ocean. Our hypothesis is that TMAO allows biomolecules to resist pressure denaturation by preserving the hydrogen bond structure of the surrounding water. We wish to observe the resistance that TMAO can potentially provide to changes in bulk water structure due to the influence of an external pressure. This would then provide a possible mechanism of biological molecule stabilization against the denaturation effects of increased pressure found in the ocean. This will be investigated using neutron diffraction and EPSR to observe relevant radial distribution functions, spatial density functions, and hydrogen bonding.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.RB1910455-2
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/109981239
Provenance
Creator Dr Harrison Laurent; Dr Tristan Youngs; Professor Lorna Dougan; Ms Shreya Patel; Professor Alan Soper; Dr Matthew Hughes
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2023
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Biology; Biomaterials; Chemistry; Engineering Sciences; Life Sciences; Materials Science; Materials Science and Engineering; Natural Sciences; Physics
Temporal Coverage Begin 2020-03-06T08:30:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2020-03-11T08:30:00Z