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Movies of Chemical Molecules Created

Posted on: Tuesday, 15 April 2008, 15:00 CDT

U.S. government scientists say they've developed a technique for creating movies of biological and chemical molecules.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago said biological and organic molecules in solution are complex since they are constantly moving and changing. Such motions have not been seen directly, but scientists using high intensity X-rays have measured images that are blurred by the motions and have used them to create more accurate movies of molecular motions.

Computer simulations are currently the only way to visualize molecular motions in solution, but researchers have not had a means to check the accuracy of those simulations for complex molecules.

Now, for the first time, scientists say they can see the movements first hand and compare them to their theoretical counterparts.

The blurring that we see in our solution X-ray patterns are remarkably sensitive to the type of the molecular motion, senior chemist David Tiede said. For the first time, we are able to test the accuracy of the simulation and change it to fit data better. Without it, we had no way of knowing how accurate the models were.

Tiede hopes improved accuracy will help determine the structures of important biological molecules.

Source: United Press International

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