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annual review
Some diseases, including cancer and ischemia (an inadequate blood supply to an organ or part of the body), involve reversible phosphorylation at a given site on the cytochrome c protein. Cytochrome c is essential for human metabolism and contains a heme iron, which allows it to function as an electron carrier. To understand the molecular basis underlying the effects of phosphorylation, an international team of researchers has used several methods to analyse the structure, dynamics and ...
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annual review
Current production process for vinyl chloride, the monomer used in PVC and everything from piping and tubing to gels and lubricants, relies on a mercury-based catalyst. Mercury is one of the most toxic substances on the planet, and the UN recently ratified the Minamata Convention, meaning that a more environmentally-friendly alternative is required.
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annual review
The Fischer-Tropsch process is used to convert hydrogen and carbon monoxide to hydrocarbons. It relies on the use of catalysts, which
make the process more efficient and can control which products are produced, from long hydrocarbon chains to heavy waxes.
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annual review
Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a type of blood cancer that originates from white blood cells in the bone marrow. It is often fatal and is considered one of the most common cancers of children and the elderly. The high mortality rate associated with this cancer can partly be ascribed to ineffective current treatments, which consist of aggressive chemotherapy and stem cell transplantation. There is a great need to find alternative treatments for AML patients to improve their outcomes. By ...
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annual review
![Shocking protein crystals into action: combining electrochemistry and infrared microscopy provides insight into [NiFe] hydrogenase mechanism](/.imaging/mte/diamond-lite-lm-theme/newsListThumb/dam/Images/publications/AR18/p85fig1/jcr:content/p85fig1.jpg)
Proteins are the nanoscale ‘machines’ that control almost all processes in cells, and revealing their structures is paramount to understanding how they work. X-ray crystallography is a valuable tool for providing ‘snapshot’ images of working proteins at an atomic level; however, some proteins are very tricky to freeze at particular moments in time.
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annual review
Several technological applications, spanning from energy storage to biomedicine, require the preparation of new materials with a finely organised 3D nanoscale structure. To achieve such delicate structures, they must be assembled from the bottom up, much like the iconic Lego bricks. However, unlike Lego, the building blocks in these scenarios are too small to be handled directly, so they must be encouraged to self-assemble.
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annual review
Aerosols are significant to the Earth’s climate, with nearly all atmospheric aerosols containing organic compounds that often contain amphiphilic molecules. However, the nature of how these compounds are arranged within an aerosol droplet remains unknown. It was recently demonstrated that fatty acids in proxies for atmospheric aerosols self-assemble into highly ordered three-dimensional nanostructures known as lyotropic liquid crystalline phases. This finding may have implications for ...
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annual review
With the melting Arctic ice cap causing its rivers to swell, understanding how organic carbon (C) is transported to the ocean and crucially trapped by these rivers is important for climate change modelling and mitigation.
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annual review
Materials that have long range magnetic order are fundamental to modern technologies, including data storage devices, space
research, cancer therapy and biomedical imaging techniques. Future miniaturisation of these components depends on designing
molecules that behave in the same way as larger magnets, and to do this we need an improved understanding of the connection
between molecular structures and their resulting properties.
Although high-temperature- and high-magnetic-field-based ...
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annual review
Building on previous work conducted at Diamond, researchers have used X-ray Pair Distribution Function (XPDF) on the I15-1 beamline
to probe the structure of a Metal Organic Framework (MOF) in its glassy state, from which they inferred the structure of its liquid form.
MOFs are crystalline materials, which are receiving a lot of interest due to their porous nature, which allows them to accommodate
guest molecules within their structure. Potential applications include drug delivery, ...
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annual review
Chemistry drastically changes at very high pressures, allowing exotic types of chemical interactions leading to the formation of
novel materials. For mixtures of iron (Fe) with a significant amount of nitrogen (N), theoretical calculations suggested that new
Fe-N compounds could be synthesised at high pressures, and are expected to have enhanced properties such as increased hardness,
superconductivity, or the ability to act as a catalyst.
A team of researchers used I15 to carry out this ...
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annual review
The world currently relies on coal, oil and gas, not only for fuel but also as raw materials for the production of chemicals. With reserves of these fossil fuels running out, and a growing awareness of the CO2 pollution their use causes, it is becoming increasingly important to develop sustainable carbon sources.
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annual review
Aerosols – tiny particles in the air – are key to the formation of clouds, as all cloud droplets form when water droplets condense around aerosols.
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annual review
The surfaces of materials can host unique electronic properties, where the electrons behave very differently from the interior. All electrons possess a magnetic moment, their spin, but in most non-magnetic materials electrons with different spins behave in the same way.
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annual review
Synchrotron light sources produce a strong and stable pulsed beam, for which the pulse sequence is dependent on the circumference of the storage ring. Many experiments only require some of the pulses, including ‘pump and probe’ experiments that activate a process and then measure it.
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annual review
The Dzyloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) was first introduced in 1957 to explain ‘weak ferromagnetism’.
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annual review
Spin-orbit torque (SOT) arises from spin-orbit coupling in heavy metal/ferromagnet bilayers, and can be used to control the magnetisation direction. It is of considerable interest as a way to efficiently switch the magnetisation of spintronic devices, which have advantages over traditional electronic devices, including non-volatile memory and logic applications. In order to engineer materials with enhanced SOT, for lower power consumption, scientists are investigating the microscopic origin ...
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annual review
To design such small molecules, a detailed map of the interactions between GLP-1 and its receptor was needed.
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annual review
Bacteria utilise ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters to import nutrients and detoxify themselves. These transporters have been shown to exist in wide open conformations that permit the access of many substrates in the binding pocket.
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annual review
Many types of single-celled microorganisms such as bacteria are covered with a protective outer layer of proteins known as the S-layer.
