Thermal Denaturation of Proteins and Chemical Equilibrium

Laura Moroni¹, Cristina Gellini¹ and Pier Remigio Salvi^1,

¹Dipartimento di Chimica, Università di Firenze, via della Lastruccia 3, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Firenze (ITALY)

Cite this paper

Laura Moroni, Cristina Gellini and Pier Remigio Salvi. Thermal Denaturation of Proteins and Chemical Equilibrium. World Journal of Chemical Education. 2015; 3(3):59-63. doi: 10.12691/WJCE-3-3-1

Abstract

The thermal denaturation of proteins is considered as a process by means of which chemical equilibrium can be introduced to undergraduate students of Chemistry related curricula. In this approach chemical potential μ, Gibbs energy G, degree of advancement ξ and Le Châtelier principle are integrated with chemical equilibrium. With reference to α-Chymotrypsinogen A as a test case, the process is discussed in terms of a simplified two-state model. The activity is addressed to physical chemistry students in combination with computer-aided work mainly involving storage/manipulation of large data sets and plot preparation.

Keywords

first-year undergraduate/physical chemistry; computer-aided learning; chemical equilibrium

Copyright

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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