Search results for "Structural Biology."
showing 10 items of 822 documents
Sixfold coordinated phosphorus by oxygen in AlPO4 quartz homeotype under high pressure.
2007
International audience; AlPO4 belongs to the berlinite quartz homeotype family, which has been the subject of intense high pressure research triggered by the supposed existence of reversible pressure induced amorphization. New x-ray diffraction experiments, complemented with ab initio calculations, demonstrate the existence of two high pressure crystalline polymorphs and show that AlPO4 share the same two stage densification mechanism as silica. In first place a compact hexagonal sublattice of oxygen atoms is formed. In a second step the cations redistribute in the interstices giving rise to a monoclinic distorted CaCl2 phase. The most outstanding feature of the new phase is that phosphorou…
Speckle random coding for 2D super resolving fluorescent microscopic imaging.
2006
In this manuscript we present a novel super resolving approach based upon projection of a random speckle pattern onto samples observed through a microscope. The projection of the speckle pattern is created by coherent illumination of the inspected pattern through a diffuser. Due to local interference of the coherent wave front with itself, a random speckle pattern is superimposed on the sample. This speckle pattern can be scanned over the object. A super-resolved image can be extracted from a temporal sequence of images by appropriate digital processing of the image stream. The resulting resolution is significantly higher than the diffraction limitation of the microscope objective. The new …
The role of electron diffraction in zeolite structure determination
2006
Because electron diffraction can sample individual microcrystals, it is clear that this single crystal method can facilitate, in at least two ways, structure determination for inorganic materials, such as zeolites, that are preferentially microcrystalline. First, in a qualitative application, three-dimensional tilts of individual small crystals, to map the reciprocal lattice, greatly facilitates unit cell and space group determination when powder diffraction indexing programs fail. If incoherent multiple scattering leads to violation of systematic absences, these absences can be restored by collection of precession diffraction patterns based on the Vincent-Midgley method [1], as demonstrate…
Application of delta recycling to electron automated diffraction tomography data from inorganic crystalline nanovolumes
2013
δ Recycling is a simple procedure for directly extracting phase information from Patterson-type functions [Rius (2012). Acta Cryst. A68, 399-400]. This new phasing method has a clear theoretical basis and was developed with ideal single-crystal X-ray diffraction data. On the other hand, introduction of the automated diffraction tomography (ADT) technique has represented a significant advance in electron diffraction data collection [Kolb et al. (2007). Ultramicroscopy, 107, 507-513]. When combined with precession electron diffraction, it delivers quasi-kinematical intensity data even for complex inorganic compounds, so that single-crystal diffraction data of nanometric volumes are now availa…
Dual-affinity avidin molecules
2005
A recently reported dual-chain avidin was modified further to contain two distinct, independent types of ligand-binding sites within a single polypeptide chain. Chicken avidin is normally a tetrameric glycoprotein that binds water-soluble d-biotin with extreme affinity (Kd ≈ 10−15M). Avidin is utilized in various applications and techniques in the life sciences and in the nanosciences. In a recent study, we described a novel avidin monomer-fusion chimera that joins two circularly permuted monomers into a single polypeptide chain. Two of these dual-chain avidins were observed to associate spontaneously to form a dimer equivalent to the wt tetramer. In the present study, we successfully used …
Room temperature crystal structure of the fast switching M159T mutant of the fluorescent protein dronpa
2015
The fluorescent protein Dronpa undergoes reversible photoswitching reactions between the bright ‘on’ and dark ‘off’ states via photoisomerisation and proton transfer reactions. We report the room temperature crystal structure of the fast switching Met159Thr mutant of Dronpa at 2.0 A resolution in the bright on state. Structural differences with the wild type include shifted backbone positions of strand β8 containing Thr159 as well as an altered A-C dimer interface involving strands β7, β8, β10, and β11. The Met159Thr mutation increases the cavity volume for the p-hydroxybenzylidene-imidazolinone chromophore as a result of both the side chain difference and the backbone positional difference…
3D reconstruction of the hemocyanin subunit dimer from the chiton Acanthochiton fascicularis.
2004
Procedures are presented for the purification of the subunit dimer from Acanthochiton fasicularis hemocyanin. Electron microscopy of negatively stained specimens revealed a uniform population of macromolecules possessing the characteristic "boat shape". A 3D reconstruction from this EM data generated a approximately 3 nm resolution model that correlates well with earlier data of the purported subunit dimer, extracted from the 3D reconstruction of the didecamer of Haliotis tuberculata hemocyanin type 1.
Discrete Derivatives for Atom-Pairs as a Novel Graph-Theoretical Invariant for Generating New Molecular Descriptors: Orthogonality, Interpretation an…
2013
This report presents a new mathematical method based on the concept of the derivative of a molecular graph (G) with respect to a given event (S) to codify chemical structure information. The derivate over each pair of atoms in the molecule is defined as ∂G/∂S(vi , vj )=(fi -2fij +fj )/fij , where fi (or fj ) and fij are the individual frequency of atom i (or j) and the reciprocal frequency of the atoms i and j, respectively. These frequencies characterize the participation intensity of atom pairs in S. Here, the event space is composed of molecular sub-graphs which participate in the formation of the G skeleton that could be complete (representing all possible connected sub-graphs) or comp…
Paleoclimate and bubonic plague: a forewarning of future risk?
2010
Background Human cases of plague (Yersinia pestis) infection originate, ultimately, in the bacterium's wildlife host populations. The epidemiological dynamics of the wildlife reservoir therefore determine the abundance, distribution and evolution of the pathogen, which in turn shape the frequency, distribution and virulence of human cases. Earlier studies have shown clear evidence of climatic forcing on contemporary plague abundance in rodents and humans. Results We find that high-resolution palaeoclimatic indices correlate with plague prevalence and population density in a major plague host species, the great gerbil (Rhombomys opimus), over 1949-1995. Climate-driven models trained on these…