Rotational Probes of Six Conformers of Neutral Cysteine

Abstract

Six of one: Vaporization of solid cysteine by laser ablation followed by the generation of a supersonic jet in a vacuum chamber has enabled six low-energy conformers of this amino acid to be characterized by using Fourier transform microwave spectroscopy (see picture). The information provided by this technique is directly comparable with that predicted from in vacuo ab initio computations.