-
news
Radio 4's Peter Curran came to Diamond Light Source to meet some of the scientists who work at and use the UK's synchrotron.
-
news
Impressive results from experiments at Diamond Light Source on magnetic lensless imaging by Fourier transform holography using extended references have been published today in Optics Express, the journal of the Optical Society of America.
-
news
More than 130 delegates from around the world, including leading experts in the field of circular dichroism (CD) spectroscopy, gathered in Oxford on 24-28 July for the 13th International Conference on Chiroptical Spectroscopy
-
highlight
The cornea is the external lens of the eye, responsible for refracting incoming light onto the crystalline lens behind, which in turn focuses it on to the retina. It also plays a protective role, shielding the rest of the eye from dust and infection. To function, the cornea must be transparent to visible light, possess high mechanical strength, and have precisely defined curvature to focus.
-
highlight
Just as humans have an ancestry, so too do viruses. But whereas we can use fossils to help identify the creatures that roamed the earth before us, viruses are much harder to classify and have left no fossilised remains for us to study. A group of researchers from Diamond Light Source and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics are currently working on piecing together a complete history of viruses, mapping out their evolutionary lineage by solving the 3D structures of the organism’s ...
-
news
Researchers using Diamond and ISIS have highlighted new manufacturing techniques that could lead to a revolution in renewable energy. A new study published in the Journal Advanced Energy Materials this week (Monday 4 July) shows how an efficient solar cell structure spontaneously forms using very simple and inexpensive manufacturing methods similar to flexible layers of material being deposited over large areas like cling-film.
-
news
New 3D picture of human membrane protein enables development of targeted anti-histamines without side-effects.
-
highlight
Elastin is the most abundant protein in mammalian elastic tissues and is responsible for their elastic recoil and resilience. Elastin dominates the mass of the aorta where it encounters the peaks and troughs of systole and diastole over the course of two billion heartbeats in a lifetime. Tropoelastin is the soluble precursor to elastin, which is constructed by the hierarchical assembly and cross-linking of many tropoelastin monomers that accumulate on a microfibrillar scaffold.1 Tropoelastin ...
-
highlight
Flavopiridol was discovered to have anti-cancer properties in 19921, specifically by binding to cyclin-dependant kinases (CDKs) and inhibiting ATP binding. Since then it has been involved in a number of phase I and II clinical studies, on its own and in combination with other drugs. Although it binds to specific CDKs with nanomolar affinity, flavopiridol has been given intravenously in higher than expected concentrations to reach a therapeutic concentration at the cancer site. The high ...
-
highlight
Transcriptional repression in eukaryotes requires the recruitment of large protein complexes to gene promoters and enhancers. These complexes contain histone deacetylases, and other enzymes, that facilitate chromatin remodelling so as to repress gene transcription. SMRT and NCoR are homologous co-repressor proteins that are recruited to multiple repressive transcription factors. When isolated from HeLa cells, SMRT and NCoR purify as large complexes of between 1 and 2 megadaltons containing ...
-
highlight
Our indigenous gut microbiota play an important role in maintaining normal health and nutrition. They provide us with traits that the human genome does not encode, such as the degradation of otherwise indigestible dietary polysaccharides. Survival in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract depends on the ability of these microorganisms to rapidly respond to changes in their dynamic nutrient environment. Here we show that a dominant member of the normal gut microbiota, Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron, ...
-
highlight
Lentiviruses are associated with chronic disease states in a variety of mammals. However, until recently it was thought that these pathogens had no capacity for germ-line integration, and were only spread horizontally in an exogenous fashion. The discovery of the prehistoric endogenous lentiviruses in rabbits (RELIK)1 and lemurs (PSIV)2 refuted these ideas revealing lentiviruses to be present in a range of mammals, capable of germ-line integration and far more ancient than previously ...
-
highlight
The majority of bacterial gene regulators bind as symmetric dimers to palindromic DNA operators. Multimeric forms of proteins, including tetramers, are able to recognize longer operator sequences in a cooperative manner, although how this is achieved is not well understood due to the lack of complete structural information. Using data collected at Diamond Light Source beamline I04, we solved the crystal structures of the multidrug binding protein TtgV, a gene repressor that controls efflux ...
-
highlight
There are literally astronomical numbers of bacteriophages on Earth. These are viral parasites of bacteria and as such generate an immense selective pressure, driving adaptive co-evolution between predator and prey. Bacterial hosts are forced to evolve protective mechanisms1 whilst the predating phages must respond to subvert these new counter-measures. One broad class of phage-resistance mechanisms takes an extreme approach, causing the suicide of phage-infected bacteria before the ...
-
highlight
The intricate wiring of the human brain requires cell surface signalling systems to guide the growing neurites to their correct locations. Indeed, the development and homeostasis of tissues throughout the body is founded on cell guidance systems. The semaphorins constitute one of the major families of cell guidance cues and with their cognate receptors, the plexins play central roles in diverse physiological processes ranging from cell migration, angiogenesis and neural connectivity to ...
-
highlight
G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) are a large family of proteins that span the cell membrane of eukaryotes and consist of seven transmembrane helices. GPCRs respond to molecules outside the cell and activate signal transduction pathways inside the cell. The adenosine receptor and β-adrenoceptors (βARs) are GPCRs that activate intracellular G proteins in response to the binding of agonists like adenosine or noradrenaline, respectively. The importance of agonist-induced activation of ...
-
highlight
Optimizing the electronic and magnetic properties of layered magnetic heterostructures for specific applications remains a challenging task for materials engineering. Characterization techniques employing the absorption and scattering of soft X-rays have emerged as important and powerful tools for the study of heterostructures and their interfaces. In fact, magnetic dichroism in X-ray absorption (XA) i.e., the difference in absorption based on the relative orientation of the X-ray ...
-
highlight
The spin-torque resonance effect on domain walls is an exciting new line of research for spintronic devices such as race-track memory and magnetic logic as it allows depinning of domain walls from pinning sites at lower threshold current densities. Following the initial observation of domain wall resonance using an oscillating current in a semicircular Ni80Fe20 (Py) wire 1 where the restoring force was provided by an applied magnetic field perpendicular to the wire, further work has shown an ...
-
highlight
All living cells require energy, usually provided in the form of ATP, to carry out fundamental processes like movement and growth. Therefore, cells have to balance energy supply with the demand. AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) has emerged as a central component of a signalling pathway involved in regulating intracellular energy homeostasis. When ADP and AMP levels increase, concomitant with a fall in ATP levels, AMPK is activated by phosphorylation on threonine-172 within the catalytic a ...
-
highlight
The anaphase promoting complex or cyclosome (APC/C) is a multi-subunit cullin-RING E3 ubiquitin ligase that functions to regulate progression through the mitotic phase of the cell cycle and controls entry into S phase 1. APC/C-mediated coordination of cell cycle progression is achieved through the temporal regulation of APC/C activity and substrate specificity. The core APC/C is assembled from 13 different proteins, mostly highly conserved and essential for function, generating a ...
