Nitrogen K-edge soft X-ray natural circular dichroism of histidine thin film

Abstract

We report preliminary natural circular dichroism (NCD) spectra of amino acids, Land D-histidine, thin films in the nitrogen K-edge energy region. NCD peaks were observed at 399.9 eV and were assigned to the 1s-π* transition of the nitrogen atoms in imidazole ring. Imidazole ring is positioned at the side chain distant from the asymmetric carbon. This result suggests that NCD spectroscopy in the soft X-ray region can selectively pick up the information on local structure around specific atoms, regardless of the position of atoms in molecules. It is interesting in view of application of NCD spectroscopy in the soft X-ray region to investigation of protein structures.