Vibrational spectroscopy is an essential tool in chemical analyses, biological assays, and
studies of functional materials. Over the past decade, various coherent nonlinear vibrational …

The structure and function of biomolecules are strongly influenced by their hydration shells.
Structural fluctuations and molecular excitations of hydrating water molecules cover a broad …

Proteins exhibit structural fluctuations over decades of time scales. From the picosecond
side chain motions to aggregates that form over the course of minutes, characterizing protein …

Although several synthetic or xenobiotic nucleic acids (XNAs) have been shown to be viable
genetic materials in vitro, major hurdles remain for their in vivo applications, particularly …

Ions interacting with hydrated RNA play a central role in defining its secondary and tertiary
structure. While spatial arrangements of ions, water molecules, and phosphate groups have …

Measuring the strength of the hydrogen bonds between DNA base pairs is of vital
importance for understanding how our genetic code is physically accessed and recognized …

The structure and function of biomolecules can be strongly influenced by their hydration
shells. A key challenge is thus to determine the extent to which these shells differ from bulk …

Anisotropic Ag nanoparticle arrays were created by metal evaporation on rippled silicon
templates for sensing of molecules with surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. Our results …

Monitoring the site-specific local structure and dynamics of polynucleotides and DNA is
important for understanding their biological functions. However, structurally characterizing …

The DNA duplex may be locally strongly bent in complexes with proteins, for example, with
polymerases or in a nucleosome. At such bends, the DNA helix is locally in the …