Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
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Item Versatility of cryo-electron microscopy as a structural technique informs iron mineral nucleation and growth in a mini-ferritin(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2024) Gauvin, Colin Charles; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: C. Martin LawrenceIron is an enigmatic element. While necessary for life, it also contributes to the generation of reactive oxygen species via the Fenton reaction. To mitigate this, cellular life has evolved the ferritin family of proteins, including the 24 subunit ferritins and bacterioferritins, and the 12 subunit DPSL "mini-ferritins". Each of these catalyze the controlled oxidation and sequestration of iron as a hydrous ferric oxyhydroxide within their hollow protein cores. While there is a wealth of structural information on the unmineralized ferritins, little is known about the structures of the biomineralized forms, and the mechanism of ferric oxyhydroxide nucleation and growth. Here we report structural and biochemical characterization of a DPS-Like protein from Pyrococcus furiosus. This "thioferritin" utilizes a bacterioferritin-like ferroxidase center, but adopts the mini-ferritin quaternary structure, and is thus thought to sit at the evolutionary boundary between mini- and maxi-ferritins. In addition to the unmineralized structure, we report the 1.91 angstrom structure of P. furiosus thioferritin as it nucleates iron-oxyhydroxide distal to the ferroxidase site. In this very low iron form, a pair of conserved glutamate residues and unsaturated carbonyls at the 3-fold axis serve to template initial nucleation. We also determine structures of higher iron forms with a biomineralized ferrihydrite core, where C-terminal residues 170-176 interact directly with the initial mineral surface, which then grows towards the particle center. These studies provide important new insight into biological mechanisms for the controlled nucleation, growth and storage of ferric oxyhydroxide in this thioferritin specifically, and the ferritin superfamily as a whole.Item Characterizing excited state transport and charge carrier dynamics in lead halide perovskites(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2020) Hickey, Casey Lynn; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Erik Grumstrup; Andrew H. Hill, Eric S. Massaro and Erik M. Grumstrup were co-authors of the article, 'Ultrafast excited-state transport and decay dynamics in cesium lead mixed halide perovskites' in the journal 'ACS energy letters' which is contained within this dissertation.; Andrew H. Hill and Erik M. Grumstrup were co-authors of the article, 'Screening links transport and recombination mechanisms in lead halide perovskites' in the journal 'The journal of physical chemistry C' which is contained within this dissertation.; Erik M. Grumstrup was a co-author of the article, 'Direct correlation of charge carrier transport to local crystal quality in lead halide perovskites' submitted to the journal 'Nano letters' which is contained within this dissertation.; Erik M. Grumstrup was a co-author of the article, 'A reduced artifact approach for determining diffusion coefficients in time-resolved microscopy' submitted to the journal 'The journal of physical chemistry C' which is contained within this dissertation.Understanding fundamental processes which drive the behavior of photoexcited charge carriers is essential to the development of novel semiconducting materials. The studies presented in this work combine ultrafast microscopy with a novel data analysis technique to provide an in-depth characterization of the excited state transport and recombination dynamics which occur in a series of lead halide perovskites. An investigation of the impact halide composition has on recombination dynamics in CsPbI 2Br revealed that trap-mediated recombination dominates at low fluences, with Auger recombination becoming increasingly important as the excitation density increases. Additionally, the average diffusivity measured for CsPbI 2Br (DA = 0.27 cm2/s) is nearly 10x lower than that observed in MAPbI 3. Further, it was determined that the dielectric constants relevant to photoexcited charge carriers in CsPbBr3 and MAPbBr3 perovskites (11.5 and 13, respectively) are intermediate between the high and low frequency limits, and that halide chemistry plays an integral role in determining the screening ability of lead halide perovskites. By correlating charge carrier diffusivities to locally measured crystal quality, it was found that solution processing methods can cause subtle lattice defects which act to impede transport and risk going undetected by bulk measurement techniques. Finally, to improve upon the traditional method for extracting diffusivities from transport measurements, which relies on perfectly Gaussian point spread functions, a new method was developed which instead relies on a numerical convolution of the actual point spread function with the diffusion equation. Compared to the traditional Gaussian method, the numerical convolution method proved to more accurately determine the diffusion coefficient, especially in the case of an anomalous point spread function.Item Immunoelectron microscopy of two Eimeria bovis antigens(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Agriculture, 1989) Liaw, Kehming