In spite of the biological importance of the binding of Zn2+, Ca2+, and Mg2+ to the carboxylate group, cation-acetate binding affinities and binding modes remain actively debated. Here, we report...

Raman multivariate curve resolution (Raman-MCR), as well as quantum and classical calculations, are used to probe water structural changes in the hydration shells of carboxylic acids and tetraalkyl ammonium ions with various aliphatic chain lengths. The results reveal that water molecules in the hydration shell around the hydrophobic chains undergo a temperature and chain length dependent structural transformation resembling that previously observed in aqueous solutions of n-alcohols. Deprotonation of the carboxylic acid headgroup (at pH ∼ 7) is found to suppress the onset of the hydration-shell structural transformation around the nearest aliphatic methylene group. Tetraalkyl ammonium cations are found to more strongly suppress the water structural transformation, perhaps reflecting the greater intramolecular charge delocalization and suppression of dangling OH defects in water's tetrahedral H-bond network. The observed coupling between ionic and hydrophobic groups, as well as the associated charge asymmetry, may influence the hydrophobicity of proteins and other materials.

The hydration-shell of CO is characterized using Raman multivariate curve resolution (Raman-MCR) spectroscopy combined with ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) vibrational density of states simulations, to validate our assignment of the experimentally observed high-frequency OH band to a weak hydrogen bond between water and CO. Our results reveal that while the hydration-shell of CO is highly tetrahedral, it is also occasionally disrupted by the presence of entropically stabilized defects associated with the CO-water hydrogen bond. Moreover, we find that the hydration-shell of CO undergoes a temperature-dependent structural transformation to a highly disordered (less tetrahedral) structure, reminiscent of the transformation that takes place at higher temperatures around much larger oily molecules. The biological significance of the CO hydration shell structural transformation is suggested by the fact that it takes place near physiological temperatures.