CD (Circular Dichroism) Analysis

Overview: This method investigates the structural properties of molecules by measuring their absorption of circularly polarized light. Specifically, linearly polarized light emitted from a light source is decomposed into left-handed and right-handed circularly polarized light with the same amplitude. When this light passes through a sample, the absorption intensity changes due to the difference in absorption by chiral molecules along different polarization directions, resulting in elliptically polarized light. The ellipticity of this ellipticity is proportional to the absorption difference. This absorption difference is known as the circular dichroism signal, which is commonly used to analyze molecular secondary structure, molecular folding processes, and interactions.

Table 1. Proportions of secondary structures obtained from sample analysis