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Posts by Hans Pfalzgraf
An exciting PhD studentship available between the U. of Manchester (Sam Lay) and Diamond Light Source -an opportunity to work with experimental time-resolved structural biology and state-of-the-art computational simulations to gain a deep understandingf enzymes.
www.findaphd.com/phds/project...
Based on the image I'd say they forgot to count the water in the hydrate?
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Came for the insightful, funny one-liners; stayed for the insightful, not-funny academic papers
If you want to help science museums and research centres from the list linked below, you can sign this open letter too!
www.sciencecentres.org.uk/centres/
High resolution structural biology approaches and ChemShell QM/MM simulations reveal an unusual structural feature in a cytochrome P460 enzyme, in research published in @chemicalscience.rsc.org
For more details: chemshell.org/mcp460-doubl...
Adenosine molecule represented as balls and sticks with carbon in red, oxygen in blue and nitrogen in green 🤢
That's one cursed colour scheme for anyone who has learned a little chemistry 😂
Fascinating insights this #FluorescenceFriday, into complement delay-accelerating factor (DAF, CD55), identified by our Ankyron™ AC40301 (red) in HeLa cells (nuclei, blue) on @discoverecho.bsky.social #microscope.
Find out more about our #animal-free Ankyrons™ at www.proimmune.com/ankyron
My protein crystals getting imaged by the Formulatrix Rock Imager. I think it's pretty awesome! 🥰
And convenient to be able to check the images from my desk, including time points to check growth. Beats sitting at a microscope where you can't drink tea! ☕
#Crystallography #ResearchComplexAtHarwell
They resealed the electron storage ring of the synchrotron @diamondlightsource.bsky.social during shutdown to get it ready for more experiments!
The work was challenging, but it seems like the dream job: it's fun, yet could also help save some of the tens of thousands of lives lost every year to this disease.
Smiling Hans in a lab coat sitting with a crystal-harvesting wand in front of a Crystal Shifter robot with a microscope and a foam bucket of liquid nitrogen.
Two beautiful protein crystals shaped like squished pyramids seen in their drop using a light microscope.
This week I harvested about 450 beautiful protein crystals, more than in my 7 previous years of crystallography! These are crystals of a Covid target in which I soaked promising drug fragments to see what binds and how.
A smiling Hans with a staff lanyard, standing inside the experimental hall of Diamond Light Source, the UK national synchrotron. There are the roofs of a couple beamlines and a yellow crane at the back. The curved wall has zone 4 indicated in red.
I started a new job at @diamondlightsource.bsky.social! A 2nd protein crystallography postdoc, this time for antiviral drug discovery 🤩
It's only funded until October this year, but I'm sure I'll find something else after that 😁
Can I be added if I'm a postdoc in protein X-ray crystallography? 😁
Oh yeah I once lost a grid and found it again this way 😂
#Cytochrome #NitrogenCycle #Spectroscopy #Catalysis #Heme #Haem #NitrousOxide #Hydroxylamine #Greenhouse #ProteinResearch #ScientificReview #Biochemistry #MolecularBiology #ProteinStructure #LifeSciences #ResearchInnovation #ScienceCommunity #AcademicPublishing #ProteinFunction
Thanks to all the authors for getting this through, especially Hannah who did most of the work!
@mikehough.bsky.social
A pretty protein structure made mostly of beta-sheets. There are two hemes, one per monomer. In P460, the heme is linked to a lysine residue and can do hydroxylamine oxidation. In one c prime beta, the heme has peroxidase-like activity. In another,it does gas binding.
I'm particularly interested in how these properties in cytochromes P460 are affected by the unusual heme-protein crosslinking. This makes them green, distorts the heme and allows them to oxidise the iron-bound NH2OH to N2O, a greenhouse gas. This is basically what makes them #P460 instead of #P450!
Our review is out! It's about β-sheet-based cytochromes, which are involved in the nitrogen cycle. We've now summarized their structures, spectra and ligand-binding. 🧪
doi.org/10.1007/s007...
Wow congatulations @cristobaluauy.bsky.social !
For the record, I ended up using BANΔIT as it does the B-factor normalisation for you!
Run it here: bandit.uni-mainz.de
Paper: doi.org/10.1002/minf...
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Thank you so much for adding me!
My supervisor @mikehough.bsky.social came up with the title 😁
Line-angle formula of a heme c with a double crosslink to a lysine residue. The modification compared to a single N-C crosslink are highlighted in red: a double bond is added between the carbons CD and CE of the lysine. The double bond of pyrrole ring D has shifted away from the new C-C crosslink to become exocyclic.
Hello, can I be added? I'm a biochemist currently making cool protein structures.
Fresh pre-print on the discovery a new heme modification: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Me: orcid.org/0000-0003-05...
More papers to come! And I do good SciComm 😁
Good idea, but actually not the same porphyrin nor the same ion 😋
Thanks James 😁
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I'll give a hint: there's iron in it 😁
Smiley Hans in the lab wearing proper PPE. Using a multichannel pipette to dispense buffers into a crystallisation plate based on electronic lab notes on a tablet.
Hello new followers! 👋
I'm a structural biologist 🧶🧬 currently having fun with unusual kinds of protein crystallography 💎 at Diamond Light Source. 😀
But my 3 years are almost over... 😢
So I'm looking for a lab-based biochemistry job 🧪 in the Oxford area. If you have any leads, please get in touch! 😁