Project description
Unravelling the role of water in chiral recognition
In biology and chemistry many biological molecules, such as amino acids, sugars, and drugs, are chiral, mirror images of each other. Because chiral molecules have different functions, being able to distinguish between the two is critical to understanding biological systems. The ERC-funded HYDROCHIRAL project aims to delineate the role of water in this chiral recognition. Since water molecules form hydration shells around chiral molecules and specific hydrogen bonding, they affect stability, folding and conformation of chiral molecules. Using innovative technologies, researchers will study chiral water structures in biomolecule solvation. Apart from fundamental knowledge, project findings are expected to help advance analytical chemistry and pharmaceutical applications like drug discovery.
Objective
Chirality and water both play key roles in various aspects of biological functions and disentangling water’s role in chiral recognition in biological processes is paramount to ultimately understanding the origins of homochirality. HydroChiral proposes to do this by developing ground-breaking instrumentation that uses broadband molecular rotational spectroscopy combined with supersonic expansions, buffer gas cell technology, and novel chiral capabilities to explore pressings topics at the forefront of water research and chirality such as the generation and characterization of chiral water, the generation of larger water clusters to examine the first solvation shell, and absolute configuration determination for analytical applications. This technique will differentiate between enantiomers, diasteriomers, and conformers within complex gas mixtures while enabling the study, at an unprecedented accuracy, of the chiral water structures that form in the solvation of biomolecules and unravel the active role of water in most biological processes.
The project will demonstrate the use of chiral techniques that have been developed for rotational spectroscopy on molecular clusters for the first time, and it will use enantiomer-selective population transfer techniques to tilt the racemic nature of chiral water clusters and create enantiomerically enriched water. The proposed research encompasses my three fields of expertise to perform cutting-edge research in water cluster science, chirality and solvation using the advantageous features of rotational spectroscopy. The outcomes of HydroChiral will open new horizons for not only fundamental research in physical chemistry and molecular physics but also in applied fields ranging from analytical chemistry to asymmetric synthesis in pharmaceutical applications such as drug discovery, where absolute configuration determination is crucial.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- natural sciencesbiological sciencesbiochemistrybiomolecules
- natural sciencesphysical sciencesopticsspectroscopy
You need to log in or register to use this function
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
47002 VALLADOLID
Spain