PAC research in biology

Abstract

In this paper possible applications of the Perturbed Angular Correlations (PAC) technique in Biology are considered. Previous PAC experiments in biology are globally analyzed. All the work that appears in the literature has been grouped in a few research lines, just to make the analysis and discussion easy. The commonly used radioactive probes are listed and the experimental difficulties are analyzed. We also report applications of 181 Hf and 111 In isotopes in life sciences other than their use in PAC. The possibility of extending these studies using the PAC technique is discussed.

Ionic exchange and the local structure in the HfO2/Ho2O3 system studied by PAC spectroscopy

“…Different experimental techniques, such as Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance (NQR), Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), Mössbauer Spectroscopy (MS), and Time-Differential c-c Perturbed-Angular-Correlation (PAC) spectroscopy, can be employed to study local electronic and structural properties at suitable probe-atom sites [22][23][24]. In particular, PAC has been extensively applied to study doped materials from the point of view of solid-state physics, chemistry, and biology in order to elucidate the subnanoscopic environment(s) of constituent or impurity atoms in solids, and the nature of chemical bonding in different kind of molecules and compounds [4,5,[25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34].…”

Nuclear radioactive techniques applied to materials research

“…Biophysics studies using the PAC technique with the probe nuclei 199m Hg (43 min) and 111m Cd (48 min) generally aim to identify the binding sites, ligands, and dynamic interactions of probe atoms attached to large biomolecules under specific conditions such as temperature, ambient solution, pH, etc, as partially reviewed by Hemmingsen [84] and Chain [ 85]. For that purpose, the radioisotopes are implanted in ice held at liquid nitrogen temperature so that, after removing the beam catcher from the vacuum chamber, the radioactive probes are directly available for biochemical processing in aqueous solution using a small chemistry lab located on-site.…”