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Magnetochrome-containing iron oxidase MamP
Magnetotactic bacteria (MTB) are a diverse group of prokaryotes that have a singular ability to align with geomagnetic field lines. This ability is due to special organelles called magnetosomes....
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Sodium chloride revisited
Everybody knows that the formula of sodium chloride is NaCl. Right? Right. But recently, the team of Artem Oganov at Stony Brook University have shown that there are other stable types of crystalline...
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Smell of pine vs climate change
That’s right: the smell of pine trees from boreal forests could mitigate the global warming — provided that the global warming doesn’t kill the forests first [1]. The volatile organic compounds...
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Thermochromatium tepidum LH1—RC complex at 3.0 Å
The light-harvesting core antenna (LH1) and the reaction centre (RC) of purple photosynthetic bacteria form a supramolecular complex (LH1—RC) to use sunlight energy in a highly efficient manner. Niwa...
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Tetracalcium octachromium(3+) strontium octacarbonate hexadecahydroxide...
The Polar Bear peninsula in Western Australia is one of the many places on this planet I never heard before. The reason I mention it now is that a new mineral named putnisite was discovered there, and...
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[Fe3S4] ferredoxin from Rhodopseudomonas palustris
The crystal structure of a novel [Fe3S4] ferredoxin associated with CYP194A4 from Rhodopseudomonas palustris has been solved at 2.15 Å resolution [1—3]. The ferredoxin, HaPuxC, contains an atypical...
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Phycocyanin against Alzheimer’s?
Could a light-harvesting protein phycocyanin be used as a novel drug against Alzheimer’s disease (AD) [1, 2]? In the present study, intact hexameric phycocyanin was isolated and crystallized from the...
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F420-reducing [NiFe]-hydrogenase at 1.7 Å
The F420-reducing [NiFe]-hydrogenase (FrhABG; EC 1.12.98.1) catalyses the reversible redox reaction between coenzyme F420 and H2. FrhABG is a group 3 [NiFe]-hydrogenase with a dodecameric quaternary...
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Ogres are not like cakes
I was intrigued by the article in New Scientist which starts with the question, “Do you speak chemistry?” [1]. So much that I asked my friend to send me the original paper [2] authored by the Bartosz...
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Pseudomonas fluorescens PhoX
Alkaline phosphatases (EC 3.1.3.1) occur widely in nature and are found in all three domains of life [1]. The Escherichia coli PhoA enzyme has been extensively studied whereas PhoX family of alkaline...
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Metals
From A Dictionary of Symbols by Juan Eduardo Cirlot (translated by Jack Sage): In astrology they are called ‘terrestrial’ or ‘subterranean planets’, because of the analogous correspondences between the...
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It’s been a while since I posted anything on this blog, but now I’m back. This is a very cool collection of videos, “a lesson about every single element on the periodic table”. Featuring Professor and...
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There is no perfect language
From The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick: It was once thought that a perfect language should have an exact one-to-one correspondence between words and their meanings. There...
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Colourful Compound Interest
I discovered Andy Brunning’s Compound Interest last year and got absolutely hooked on it – and I don’t even teach chemistry! If, perchance, you do teach chemistry and don’t yet know what CI is all...
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Nitrite binding modes in CuNIR
Fukuda and Inoue [1] have determined the crystal structure of the C135A mutant of thermostable copper nitrite reductase (CuNIR) from Geobacillus thermodenitrificans in complex with nitrite to 1.55 Å...
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A magnetic protein biocompass?
A team of scientists from Peking University report a putative magnetic receptor (MagR) protein in Drosophila, CG8198 [1]. MagR binds an iron—sulphur cluster and interacts with photoreceptor...
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Human Apaf-1 apoptosome at 3.8 Å
The apoptotic protease-activating factor 1 (Apaf-1) exists in normal cells as an autoinhibited monomer. Upon binding to cytochrome c and dATP, Apaf-1 forms a heptameric complex known as the...
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Crystal structure of the DNAzyme 9DB1
The first ever crystal structure of a deoxyribozyme has been solved at 2.8 Å resolution [1—3]. The work by researchers from Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry (Göttingen, Germany) also...
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First eukaryotic photosystem II solved at 2.76 Å
The water-splitting reaction of photosynthesis is catalysed by photosystem II (PSII), a large protein complex located in thylakoid membranes of organisms ranging from cyanobacteria to higher plants...
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Octahaem sulphite reductase MccA
The epsilonproteobacterium Wolinella succinogenes is able to grow by sulphite respiration with formate as electron donor [1], thanks to the octahaem cytochrome c MccA that catalyses the six-electron...
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