Exploring Hydrogen Bond in Biological Molecules

Life makes extensive use of non-covalent interactions, as they are a convenient way to build complex structures that can be assembled or disassembled quickly, with a minimum energy consumption. Among the inter-molecular interactions, hydrogen bond plays a central role, and it is the main responsible of the structure of proteins, DNA, and several other superstructures in the cell. Characterization of hydrogen bond in biologic environment is not an easy task, and several complex and imaginative techniques have been developed to circumvent the technical challenges of such studies. We present here an overview of the field of mass-resolved laser spectroscopy applied to nucleobases, peptides, and monosaccharides to demonstrate that despite the different environment the molecules encounter in the jet, such experiments yield important structural information that helps understanding the role played by hydrogen bond in biology.