The purpose of this investigation was to determine if there can be transport of vibrational energy along alpha helices by means of a soliton mechanism. This has been proposed by A. S. Davydov, and, if proven correct, would be highly significant for the interpretation of structure and function in biological macromolecules. / The approach necessary to generate dynamical solutions with soliton character for the helix, is one of forming a reduced Hamiltonian for the amide I vibrational modes, i.e. replacing 'background' modes, to which they are coupled, with quantum mechanical averages. As a result the total wavefunction has a semiclassical form, i.e. a product of background and 'primary' (amide I) wavefunctions. / Since such product forms for the wavefunctions of interacting systems are not generally valid we sought a way to describe the composite system exactly. This we achieved by means of two simple transformations of the total Hamiltonian, which allowed the extraction of dynamically significant terms. The simulations were performed on a Cyber 205, by means of a highly vectorized algorithm for the transformed Hamiltonian. / The results of these studies were that no soliton-like behavior was observed. Energy, initially localized, spreads down the helix more slowly, but the width of the excitation packet is wider than if there was no background coupling. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 49-08, Section: B, page: 2979. / Major Professor: William C. Rhodes. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1988.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_77843 |
| Contributors | Nicholls, Anthony., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 267 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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