USD@UP group at Bunsentagung 2023

We had an enjoyable Bunsenmeeting in Berlin this year with several contributions by the Group. Yannik gave his first conference talk and shared his exciting results that deprotonation can accelerate a photochemical reaction. Anna and Till presented a poster on our progress using pH-jump for modulation of peptide and protein structures and Philip continued his Bunsen experience with an Sweet 2D-IR poster 2.0.

Rike had the honor to deliver one of the seven keynote lecture of the meeting and shared her fascination for expanding from ultrafast to multiscale experiments with a filled lecture hall. See you in Aachen 2024!

Article on Trends in Physical Chemistry (Trendbericht Physikalische Chemie)

Rike was invited this year by the "Nachrichten aus der Chemie" to contribute one article on trends in Physical Chemistry (Trendbericht Physikalische Chemie). This introduction to Ultrafast structural dynamics is availble online (in German only) and covers the basics of time-resolved X-ray and electron diffraction experiments with ultrafast timeresolution. Example experiments include studies of ultrafast structural dynamics upon light-induced spin cross over (LIESST).

Sweet 2D-IR - Paper in J. Chem. Phys.

Our first 2D-IR paper of the group and working setup was accepted for a (very) Special collection: Celebrationg 25 years of Two-dimensional Infrared (2D IR) Spectroscopy! Congratulations to Philip & Till. 

We report the first 2D-IR spectra of carbohydrates, applying the strategy to include a vibrational probe (-SCN) for monitoring the structural dynamics. The presented results show the applicability of this new strategy in water. Stay tuned for more Sweet 2D-IR :)  & Happy birthday to our favourite spectroscopic approach!

New paper (09/2019) - First Full Crystallographic Movie of an enzymatic reaction

Time-resolved crystallography reveals water mediated allostery as new mechanism for information transfer in proteins. In a series of experiment, carried out at PETRA III Hamburg, we have observed the full catalytic reaction mechanism in the enzyme defluorinase and found a novel mechanism for allosteric long range communication.

The paper is the result of a collaboration between U Toronto, MPSD Hamburg and U Potsdam.

Mehrabi, P. et al - Time-resolved crystallography reveals allosteric communication aligned with molecular breathing, Science  13 Sep 2019: Vol. 365, Issue 6458, pp. 1167-1170, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw9904

New Paper (02/2019) - Review on Sample Delivery for Serial Crystallography

Finally - the idea for this review dates back a while to some very fruitful conference discussions among the three of us authors, who are all very active in method development for serial crystallography experiments. We originally planned to mainly write about fixed targets for serial crystallography, now this turned into a full review of all currently available approaches on "how to get your sample into the beam" if you want to do a serial X-Ray experiment . The methods are available and used broadly now, both at XFELs and for the newly emerging technique of serial synchrotron crystallography. 

The paper is published here: Martiel, I., Müller-Werkmeister, H. M., Cohen, A. E., Strategies for sample delivery for femtosecond crystallography, Acta Cryst. (2019). D75, 160-177, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1107/S2059798318017953

New Paper (01/2019) - First data from Potsdam published

The first results on photocaged compounds from our great collaboration with Arwen Pearson's group at Universty of Hamburg are published. Great synthesis Joe!... and Yannik, congratulations to get part of your Master thesis out.

We contributed by laser flash photolysis experiments, quite challenging as the sample needed to be replaced for every single scan (...the difficulty of characterising irreversible reactions).

Photocaged compounds are promising tools for applications like time-resolved crystallography, as they allow to initiate reaction dynamics by light to release a substrate (i.e. the substrate for an enzyme) or activate a biological process (i.e. by uncaging a residue in an active center).

Find the paper here: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2019/ra/c9ra00968j

November 2018 - New paper online in Nature Methods

HARE- SSX, Hit-and-return serial synchrotron crystallography is a new technical approach that allows the study of protein dynamics from milliseconds to seconds. We demonstrate here the principle, which is based on using the crystallography chip developed at the University of Toronto and MPSD Hamburg. 

The paper can be found here:  https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-018-0180-2