Catalytic hydrogen evolution by polyaminoacids using mercury electrode

It was shown that using constant current chronopotentiometricstripping (CPS) peptides and proteins at nanomolar concentrations produce protein structure–sensitive peak H at mercury electrodes. This peak is due to the catalytic hydrogen evolution reaction (HER). Polyamino acids can be considered as an intermediate model system between peptides and macromolecular proteins. Here we used polyamino acids (poly(aa)) such as polylysine (polyLys) and polyarginine (polyArg) and cyclic voltammetry or CPS in combination with hanging mercury drop electrode to explore how different amino acid residues in proteins contribute to the catalyticHER.