Publications by authors named "Monika Bjelcic"

Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCO) is the enzyme responsible for the first step of carbon dioxide (CO) fixation in plants, which proceeds via the carboxylation of ribulose 1,5-biphosphate. Because of the enormous importance of this reaction in agriculture and the environment, there is considerable interest in the mechanism of fixation of CO by RuBisCO. Here, a serial synchrotron crystallography structure of spinach RuBisCO is reported at 2.

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In recent years, the emergence of serial crystallography, initially pioneered at X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs), has sparked a growing interest in collecting macromolecular crystallographic data at room temperature. Various fixed-target serial crystallography techniques have been developed, ranging from commercially available chips to in-house designs implemented at different synchrotron facilities. Nevertheless, there is currently no commercially available chip (known to the authors) specifically designed for the direct handling of oxygen-sensitive samples.

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Article Synopsis
  • Serial and time-resolved macromolecular crystallography is gaining popularity, but limited beam time at X-ray facilities and insufficient infrastructure at synchrotrons pose challenges.
  • A new setup using the JUNGFRAU detector allows for kilohertz serial crystallography and captures multiple-time-point dynamics of proteins at synchrotrons, greatly improving data collection speed.
  • The system demonstrated effective collection of high-quality X-ray data from lysozyme microcrystals in just 1 minute and enabled observations of protein dynamics at a resolution of 1 millisecond, with plans for automation in data handling to support researchers.
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Serial femtosecond crystallography was initially developed for room-temperature X-ray diffraction studies of macromolecules at X-ray free electron lasers. When combined with tools that initiate biological reactions within microcrystals, time-resolved serial crystallography allows the study of structural changes that occur during an enzyme catalytic reaction. Serial synchrotron X-ray crystallography (SSX), which extends serial crystallography methods to synchrotron radiation sources, is expanding the scientific community using serial diffraction methods.

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BioMAX is the first macromolecular crystallography beamline at the MAX IV Laboratory 3 GeV storage ring, which is the first operational multi-bend achromat storage ring. Due to the low-emittance storage ring, BioMAX has a parallel, high-intensity X-ray beam, even when focused down to 20 µm × 5 µm using the bendable focusing mirrors. The beam is tunable in the energy range 5-25 keV using the in-vacuum undulator and the horizontally deflecting double-crystal monochromator.

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Recent experiments for various amides and sugars showed a clear correlation of the temperature dependence of the Soret coefficient with the hydrophilicity, quantitatively described by the logarithm of the 1-octanol/water partition coefficient log P . This coefficient is a measure for the hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity balance of a solute and is often used to model the transport of a compound in the environment or to screen for potential pharmaceutical compounds. In order to validate whether this concept works also for other water soluble molecules we investigated systematically the thermophoresis of mono- and polyhydric alcohols.

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