From: Tom Laue <tml@hopper.unh.edu>
  To  : rasmb@bbri.eri.harvard.edu
  Date: Fri, 10 Mar 1995 17:24:40 -0500

dn/dc

While meeting with Steve Harding and Arthur Rowe, the topic of specific
refractive increments came up. With the release of interference optics for
the XLA coming up, this topic may be of greater interest, particularly with
regard to the determination of extinction coefficients.

Our conversation drifted quickly into whether or not there was any newer
tabulation of dn/dc for proteins than the Perlman and Longsworth work of
1948. Arthur Rowe has gathered some data on proteins and finds some
deviations from this older work. He and Steve have tossed out the idea of
doing a new systematic set of measurements. Several questions for the RASMB
crowd:

1) Is anyone aware of newer tabulations of dn/dc for biological materials?
2) Are there references to specific materials (probably from light
scattering papers) where the dn/dc has been measured reliably? If so, please
send them to me (tml@hopper.unh.edu) and I'll keep a compilation.
3) Are dn/dc available for the amino acids? If so, it should be possible to
compute dn/dc from composition.

I look forward to your responses!
Tom Laue