Abstract Thirty phosphane ligands were prepared and characterized. Aryl groups of the phosphane ligands were modified through change in functionality. The side chains were the following: trifluoromethylphenyl, selenomethylphenyl, 9-anthryl, alkyl-substituted aryl groups, and pyridyl and alkyl groups. In addition, three chromium carbonyl complexes of potentially bidentate arylphosphanes containing nitrogen heteroatoms were prepared and characterized. Characterization of the isolated complexes verified the monodentate coordination from phosphorus and two bidentate coordination modes, (P,N)-bound and (N,N')-bound. Ligands and complexes were characterized by 1H, 13C{1H}, 31P{1H}, and two-dimensional NMR spectroscopy, X-ray crystallography, and mass spectrometry. The 13C{1H} and 31P{1H} NMR spectra, and calculated cone angles of the o-alkyl-substituted aryl- and arylalkylphosphane ligands provided valuable parameters, which could be plotted against catalytic results in the search for correlations between the structures and catalytic behavior of ligands. Correlations were found between the parameters and the catalytic behavior of Rh-catalysts modified with the o-alkyl-substituted phenylphosphanes. The research reported here was directed toward the preparation and characterization of phosphane ligands which would favor the formation of isobutanal in propene hydroformylation. The o-alkyl-substituted arylphosphanes, which were studied most throughly, gave the highest selectivity to isobutanal but at the cost of activity. Linear n-butanal was still the main product, though only barely. Alkyl substituents in meta position increased the activity of propene hydroformylation even up to the level with the reference ligand PPh3, but, the selectivity decreased simultaneously.

NMR spectroscopy has evolved into one of the most important characterization techniques in chemistry with which it is possible to obtain valuable structural, dynamical, and mechanistic information. Most applications of NMR have however been limited to the use of nuclei having spin quantum numbers of 1/2. This thesis discusses the developments that have been advanced in order to extract quantitative structural information from the NMR spectroscopy of quadrupolar nuclei (spin, I>1/2) which account for the vast majority of the NMR-active nuclei. In a first part of the thesis, a NMR crystallographic method is developed which uses the electric field gradient tensor measured at the nuclear sites as an experimental constraint in DFT-based crystal structure refinements. This inclusion of experimental data into crystal structure refinements enables the determination of higher quality, and experimentally-relevant, structures. We apply this new methodology in order to determine higher quality crystal structures for the non-linear optical material Na2B2Al2O7, sodium pyrophosphates, and the near-zero thermal expansion material ZrMgMo3O12. In a second part of this thesis, experimental techniques are developed for the measurement of spin-spin coupling between pairs of quadrupolar nuclei; the measurement of spin-spin coupling carries with it extremely valuable distance and connectivity information. Using DOR NMR, heteronuclear residual dipolar coupling as well as homonuclear J coupling multiplets can be observed. Notably, the J coupling between quadrupolar nuclei can still be measured in A2 spin systems, unlike in the case of pairs of spin-1/2 nuclei. The theory that was developed for the characterization of these multiplets was extended for the general simulation of exact NMR spectra of quadrupolar. This program, known as QUEST, is now free to use by anyone in the scientific community. Pulsed J-resolved NMR experiments are then described which enable the facile measurement of J and dipolar coupling in homonuclear pairs of quadrupolar nuclei. Notably, the J splitting is greatly amplified in A2 spin systems which provides strong structural information and enables the precise detection of smaller J coupling constants. These techniques are applied towards directly studying gallium metal-metal bonding interactions as well as boron-boron bonds in diboron compounds of importance in β-boration chemistry.

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One- and two-dimensional NMR spectroscopy, including 13C{6Li}{1H} triple resonance techniques, were used to characterize a series of mixed alkyllithium aggregates and to study their exchange processes.

La spectroscopie RMN in vivo pondérée en diffusion est sensible au mouvement des métabolites cérébraux (glutamate, créatine, choline, NAA, myo- inositol, taurine...), permettant de mesurer leur coefficient de diffusion apparent (CDA). Ces métabolites étant exclusivement intracellulaires, leur CDA dépend seulement du milieu intracellulaire, en particulier de la viscosité du cytosol, de la densité des structures intracellulaires, et de la forme et taille des cellules. En général, le CDA des métabolites est mesuré pour un temps de diffusion Td de l’ordre de quelques dizaines de millisecondes, leur laissant le temps de parcourir quelques micromètres et d’interagir plusieurs fois avec des structures intracellulaires. Le CDA dépend alors potentiellement de tous les paramètres intracellulaires cités plus haut, et ce de manière mal définie. Cette thèse présente de nouvelles méthodes de spectroscopie dans le cerveau de rongeur pour mesurer le CDA pour des Td allant de 0.2 millisecondes jusqu’à 2 secondes. Un premier jeu de mesures a été exploité par la modélisation pour extraire des paramètres clés de la morphologie des cellules du cerveau. La sensibilité des méthodes développées, en cas de variation pathologique de la morphologie des cellules, a ensuite été étudiée grâce à des souris injectées avec un facteur neurotrophique, le CNTF (ciliary neurtrophic factor). Certaines de leurs cellules, les astrocytes, deviennent massivement hypertrophiques, et les propriétés de diffusion de certains métabolites y sont sensibles. Enfin l’application à un modèle souris de la maladie de Huntington (transgénique), est présentée. / In vivo diffusion-weighted NMR spectroscopy is sensitive to the motion of cerebral metabolites (glutamate, creatine, choline, NAA, myo-inositol, taurine…), allowing the measurement of their apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC). Since these metabolites are purely intracellular, their ADC only depends on the intracellular medium, in particular cytosol viscosity, density of intracellular structures, and the shape and size of cells. In general, metabolite ADC is measured for a single diffusion time Td, equal to a few dozens milliseconds, leaving them time to explore a few micrometers and to interact repeatedly with intracellular structures. Their ADC then potentially depends on all intracellular parameters mentioned above, in a poorly defined way. This thesis presents new spectroscopy methods in the rodent brain to measure ADC over an unprecedented range of Td, from approximately 0.2 milliseconds up to 2 seconds. A first set of measurements has been modeled to extract key morphological brain cell parameters. The sensitivity of these methods to morphological changes in brain cell morphology has first been studied on mice injected with CNTF (ciliary neurotrophic factor), that causes a strong hypertrophy of a specific cell type, astrocytes. Diffusion properties of some metabolites are indeed sensitive to this massive cell morphological change. The last part presents the application to a transgenic mouse model of Huntington’s disease.

The secondary structure of DNA is variable and depends on the sequence of nu- cleotides in a strand. While DNA can form duplexes, formations of three, four, or even a single strand have been observed in vivo and in vitro as well. In this thesis, we study the effect of small changes of oligonucleotide sequences on the stability of hairpins formed by DNA heptamers by 1 H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Suitable DNA sequences were selected based on symmetry rules and stability prediction by near- est neighbor model. Two-dimensional 1 H -1 H NOESY spectra were used to assign the 1 H resonances of aromatic hydrogens. Variable-temperature 1D spectra served for ob- taining melting curves, from which the thermodynamic properties of the hairpins were determined. The presence of hairpins in the solutions was confirmed by the character of the NOESY spectra, independence of melting temperature on oligonucleotide concen- tration, and comparison of competing melting-curve models of duplex and hairpin. Our results point out the importance of the order of the stem base pairs and contribute to the description of the extraordinary stability of DNA mini-hairpins. 1

Phytochromes (Phys) are biliproteins that regulate light responses in plants, fungi, and microorganisms through photoconversion between a dark state and a photoproduct. Thermal reversion of the photoproduct is an intrinsic property of all Phys, typically occurring on a timescale of seconds to days. Despite methodological advances, the structural and spectroscopic determination of short-lived photoproducts has proven challenging. We herein present an innovative approach for photoproduct stabilisation by incorporating the protein into trehalose glasses (TGs). The resulting Phy–trehalose matrices were investigated by UV/Vis absorption and solid-state NMR spectroscopies. Our results demonstrate that the TGs strongly inhibit thermal reversion of the incorporated Phy proteins for periods as long as several weeks at room temperature (RT), during which the proteins fully sustain their native structures and spectral and biochemical properties. This sample preparation approach is beneficial for revealing bona fide structure/ function relationships of short-lived photoproducts that are otherwise not accessible, thus paving the way towards a deeper molecular understanding of the diversified spectral properties of Phys. Our results also provide new insights into the molecular mechanism of trehalose bioprotection.

Ministry of Higher Education; Sultanate of Oman / Digital full-text is unavailable. Submitted disc unusable.

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