ACES Trainee Presentation to the ACES Visiting Committee
Eric Pinnick
Physics Department - Boston University
Thursday - November 29, 2007
Physics Research Building - Room 595

"Computational Studies of Nitrous Oxide Interactions with Biomolecular Systems"

Nitrous oxide is a molecule of long interest as an anesthetic, and of increasing interest as a possible probe of biological systems. However, the underlying mechanisms for its effects on biological systems are not
yet understood.

One hypothesis is that nitrous oxide disrupts the transient hydrogen-bonded bridges within biological systems, shortening the nanosecond-scale lifetimes of these bridges by one or more orders of magnitude. This disruption may account for the effects of nitrous oxide on biological systems. This may also account for the vibrational lifetime
shifts of nitrous oxide in lipid bilayer systems, recently observed here at BU by Chieffo et al. using ultra fast FTIR spectroscopy.

Understanding the interactions of nitrous oxide with the basic components of biological systems may shed light on these problems. In this talk, I present results from computational simulations performed to gain insight into these problems. Calculations include the potential of mean force of nitrous oxide in a DMPC bilayer in water.