Identifying Peptide Structures with THz Spectroscopy

Abstract

Short peptides composed of only a few amino acid residues are of great interest due to their biological activity and have also been shown to exhibit catalytic activity. Identifying their dynamic $3\mathbf{D}$ structure is quintessential for studying structure - activity relations. We present temperature-dependent THz spectroscopy of tetrameric peptide catalysts. These THz spectra, supported by DFT calculations, allow us to distinguish structural features of different peptides.