Connecting Protein Millisecond Conformational Dynamics to Protein Thermal Stability.

The stability of protein folded states is crucial for its function, yet the relationship with the protein sequence remains poorly understood. Prior studies have focused on the amino acid composition and thermodynamic couplings within a single folded conformation, overlooking the potential contribution of protein dynamics. Here, we address this gap by systematically analyzing the impact of alanine mutations in the C-terminal ß-strand (ß5) of ubiquitin, a model protein exhibiting millisecond timescale interconversion between two conformational states differing in the ß5 position. Our findings unveil a negative correlation between millisecond dynamics and thermal stability, with alanine substitutions at seemingly flexible C-terminal residues significantly enhancing thermostability. Integrating spectroscopic and computational approaches, we demonstrate that the thermally unfolded state retains a substantial secondary structure but lacks ß5 engagement, recapitulating the transition state for millisecond dynamics. Thus, alanine mutations that modulate the stabilities of the folded states with respect to the partially unfolded state impact both the dynamics and stability. Our findings underscore the importance of conformational dynamics with implications for protein engineering and design.

Ligand vacancy channels in pillared inorganic-organic hybrids for electrocatalytic organic oxidation with enzyme-like activities.

Simultaneously achieving abundant and well-defined active sites with high selectivity has been one of the ultimate goals for heterogeneous catalysis. Herein, we construct a class of Ni hydroxychloride-based inorganic-organic hybrid electrocatalysts with the inorganic Ni hydroxychloride chains pillared by the bidentate N-N ligands. The precise evacuation of N-N ligands under ultrahigh-vacuum forms ligand vacancies while partially retaining some ligands as structural pillars. The high density of ligand vacancies forms the active vacancy channel with abundant and highly-accessible undercoordinated Ni sites, exhibiting 5-25 fold and 20-400 fold activity enhancement compared to the hybrid pre-catalyst and standard ß-Ni(OH)2 for the electrochemical oxidation of 25 different organic substrates, respectively. The tunable N-N ligand can also tailor the sizes of the vacancy channels to significantly impact the substrate configuration leading to unprecedented substrate-dependent reactivities on hydroxide/oxide catalysts. This approach bridges heterogenous and homogeneous catalysis for creating efficient and functional catalysis with enzyme-like properties.

Recognition of Surface Oxygen Intermediates on NiFe Oxyhydroxide Oxygen-Evolving Catalysts by Homogeneous Oxidation Reactivity.

NiFe oxyhydroxide is one of the most promising oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts for renewable hydrogen production, and deciphering the identity and reactivity of the oxygen intermediates on its surface is a key challenge but is critical to the catalyst design for improving the energy efficiency. Here, we screened and utilized in situ reactive probes that can selectively target specific oxygen intermediates with high rates to investigate the OER intermediates and pathway on NiFe oxyhydroxide. Most importantly, the oxygen atom transfer (OAT) probes (e.g., 4-(diphenylphosphino) benzoic acid) could efficiently inhibit the OER kinetics by scavenging the OER intermediates, exhibiting lower OER currents, larger Tafel slopes, and larger kinetic isotope effect (KIE) values, while probes with other reactivities demonstrated much smaller effects. Combining the OAT reactivity with electrochemical kinetic and operando Raman spectroscopic techniques, we identified a resting Fe═O intermediate in the Ni-O scaffold and a rate-limiting O-O chemical coupling step between a Fe═O moiety and a vicinal bridging O. DFT calculation further revealed a longer Fe═O bond formed on the surface and a large kinetic energy barrier of the O-O chemical coupling step, corroborating the experimental results. These results point to a new direction of liberating lattice O and expediting O-O coupling for optimizing NiFe-based OER electrocatalyst.

Morphology engineering of nickel molybdate hydrate nanoarray for electrocatalytic overall water splitting: from nanorod to nanosheet.

The morphology of nano-arrays plays an important role in their applications for catalysis, energy, environment. However, the morphology modulation of nano-arrays generally involves complex optimization of synthetic conditions including surfactants, pH, and solvent. In this work, we synthesize a NiMoO4·H2O nano-array by a simple hydrothermal method under mild conditions (pH = 6.47, aqueous solution, and without the aid of surfactants). The morphology modulation of the NiMoO4·H2O nano-array is realized by simply changing the hydrothermal temperature. When the hydrothermal temperature below 150 °C, a NiMoO4·H2O nanorod array is obtained. While the hydrothermal temperature is as high as 180 °C, the array on Ni foam is nanosheet instead of nanorod. The NiMoO4·H2O nanorod array synthesized at 150 °C shows a superior water splitting activity compared to the NiMoO4·H2O nanosheet array, affording a large current density of 10 mA cm-2 at an overpotential of <240 and 200 mV toward oxygen evolution reaction and hydrogen evolution reaction, respectively. Furthermore, the electrolyzer using NiMoO4·H2O nanorod array as both anode and cathode electrodes for catalyzing overall water splitting exhibits great performance, obtaining a current density of 10 mA cm-2 at 1.67 V, comparable to the integration of commercial noble-metal Pt/C and IrO2 electrodes.