Visible and UV-resonance Raman spectroscopy of model peptides

We review various visible and UV-resonance Raman experiments on model pepti des such as N-methylacetamide and di- and triglycine which are aimed at exp loring the structure and dynamics of these molecules. Whereas visible Raman spectroscopy probes the electronic ground state, the UV Raman technique is utilized additionally to obtain structural information about excited elect ronic states. This research is aimed at obtaining a spectroscopically deter mined force field, which can be transferred to polypeptides and proteins. W e further argue that the capability of vibrational spectroscopy to probe th e structure of peptides and proteins can be significantly improved by combi ning computational and spectroscopic studies on appropriate model peptides to calibrate wavenumbers and intensities of Raman and IR bands for the quan titative determination of structural parameters such as the dihedral angles . Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.