Letter from Tom Sakmar

September 4, 2001

Dear Dick and Julie:

I wanted to send you some spectra. Gopal, Santosh, and Terry have been using the spectrophotometers essentially full time all summer. We were studying a synthetic cationic amphipathic peptide that we hypothesized would change conformation to alpha helix in the presence of phospholipid bilayers of particular compositions. We eventually took up the challenge of trying to obtain CD spectra in essentially turbid solutions at high phospholipid vesicle concentrations. With Dick's help, we eventually moved the cuvette near to the PMT. With signal averaging, we were able to obtain, what I think are data that no one has previously reported - direct evidence of transition from random coil to alpha helix in the presence of increasing dioleoyl phosphotidylserine concentration in vesicles. The data are spectacular. Similar things have been done in detergents, but not in actual bilayers.

Since the cuvette is now just sitting on a lip inside of the sample compartment near the PMT, we would like to ask if you could design and fabricate a sample holder accessory.

Sincerely
Tom [Sakmar]

P.S. - I apologize for taking so long to send back the electronics module. I guess that you have received it recently.