The biological dehalogenation of fluoroacetate carried out by fluoroacetate dehalogenase is discussed by using quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) calculations for a whole-enzyme model of 10 800 atoms. Substrate fluoroacetate is anchored by a hydrogen-bonding network with water molecules and the surrounding amino acid residues of Arg105, Arg108, His149, Trp150, and Tyr212 in the active site in a similar way to haloalkane dehalogenase. Asp104 is likely to act as a nucleophile to attack the alpha-carbon of fluoroacetate, resulting in the formation of an ester intermediate, which is subsequently hydrolyzed by the nucleophilic attack of a water molecule to the carbonyl carbon atom. The cleavage of the strong C-F bond is greatly facilitated by the hydrogen-bonding interactions between the leaving fluorine atom and the three amino acid residues of His149, Trp150, and Tyr212. The hydrolysis of the ester intermediate is initiated by a proton transfer from the water molecule to His271 and by the simultaneous nucleophilic attack of the water molecule. The transition state and produced tetrahedral intermediate are stabilized by Asp128 and the oxyanion hole composed of Phe34 and Arg105.

A two-color pump beam consisting of a fundamental beam of a Ti:sapphire laser (35 fs, 802 nm) and a signal beam generated by optical parametric amplification (55 fs, 1203 nm) was utilized to generate multiple Raman sidebands by vibrational four-wave Raman mixing. The second harmonic emission (401 nm) was further employed as a seed beam for enhancing efficiency. Numerous sidebands emitting at 602, 481, 344, 301, 267, 241, 219, 200, and 185 nm were observed by irradiating the beam onto a screen coated with sodium salicylate. The spectral band width of these emission lines was capable of generating 0.9-fs optical pulses by Fourier synthesis.

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An authentic mixture of polychlorinated biphenyls was measured using a short wide-bore capillary column for the group separation of major components present in an actual sample of Kanechlor. The limits of detection were improved by ca. 2 fold in comparison with those obtained using a conventional capillary column, since the retention time was reduced and the amount of analytes introduced into the mass spectrometer per unit time could be increased. On the other hand, surface-water and sediment samples containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were collected from the river located in the vicinity of a waste water treatment plant. Even acenaphthylene, a minor component of the mixture could be measured for the sediment sample, and the concentrations were determined for several heavy PAHs. As demonstrated, a technique involving laser multiphoton ionization/time-of-flight mass spectrometry was useful as a sensitive and selective analytical tool for the trace analysis of persistent organic pollutants in an environmental sample.

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