Conveners
MS: 7 Materials at Extreme Conditions: X-ray Crystallography and Beyond
- Giuliana Aquilanti (Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste)
- Davide Comboni (ESRF Grenoble)
MS: 1 Modern Integrative Structural Biology
- Beatrice Vallone (Università degli studi "Sapienza" di Roma)
- Stefano Mangani (Università di Siena)
MS: 3 Italy@EuXFEL
- Sakura Pascarelli (EuXFEL Hamburg)
MS: 4 Frontiers in Mineralogy and Inorganic Geochemistry
- Gabriele Giuli (Università di Camerino)
- Donato Belmonte (Università degli Studi di Genova)
MS: 5 Experimental Design & Analysis of Data
- Marco Milanesio (Università del Piemonte Orientale)
MS: 8 Bright Radiation Sources and Novel Software Applications
- Corrado Cuocci (CNR - Istituto di Cristallografia)
- Francesco Stellato (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare)
MS: 6 Crystallographic and Spectroscopic Advanced Tools Applied to Pharmaceuticals
- Fabia Gozzo (Excelsus Structural Solution)
MS: 2 Understanding Advanced Functional Materials Through Operando Studies
- Simona Galli (Università degli Studi Dell'Insubria)
- Elisa Borfecchia (Università degli Studi di Torino)
MS: 11 Interplay between Crystal Growth and Advanced Characterizations for Materials Development
- Federico Boscherini (Università di Bologna)
- Paola Prete (CNR - Istituto per la Microelettronica e i Microsistemi)
MS: 9 Current Approaches in Structural Biology
- Simona Fermani (Università di Bologna)
- Michele Cianci (Università Politecnica delle Marche)
MS: 10 Investigating Molecular Crystals: Methods and Applications
- Emanuele Priola (Università degli Studi Torino)
- Alessandra Forni (CNR - Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie Chimiche)
MS: 13 Science & Society: from Dissemination to Communication
- Marta Morana (Università di Pavia)
- Paola D'Angelo (Università degli Studi Sapienza Roma)
MS: 12 Nanostructured Materials
- Paolo Scardi (Università di Trento)
The ESRF’s large-volume press beamline, ID06LVP, has been in User operation for 10 years (e.g. Guignard & Crichton, 2015). It complements the ESRF’s already wide-ranging extreme conditions portfolio by offering, primarily, in situ angle-dispersive diffraction-based experimentation with a multi-anvil device that operates in one-and two-stage modes. Through use of independent anvils; both...
During 2019, the novel DSSC 2D imaging detector [1] was commissioned at the Spectroscopy and Coherent Scattering (SCS) instrument of the European X-ray Free-Electron Laser (EuXFEL) [2]. To fully exploit the high repetition rate provided at EuXFEL (up to 2.25 MHz), the DSSC detector was designed to be the fastest one-megapixel camera available worldwide, providing single-photon sensitivity in...
In multicelular organisms, oriented cell divisions are fundamental for morphogenesis and homeostasis [1]. Division orientation is orchestrated by the microtubule-based motor dynein, which sustains all mitotic spindle functions. During cell division, cortical force generators connect epithelial polarity sites with astral microtubules, allowing dynein movements to orient the mitotic spindle...
Superconductivity is an amazing macrocopic quantum many body effect [1]. This phenomena continue to arose the interest of material scientists, physicsts and chemists due to a variety of systems which show such an effect and the intriuging nature of the structural effects on superconductivity. This makes the high-pressure structural studies of such systems an important field of research. At the...
Amyloidosis are systemic diseases characterized by deposition of misfolded proteins into cross-β amyloids in multiple organs in humans and animals. During chronic inflammation, serum amyloid A protein (SAA) levels increases, which result in AA amyloidosis. There is a extreme disease prevalence in captive animals, e.g. 70% in captive cheetah and 57-73% in domestic short hair cats kept in...
Planetary science is witnessing a revolution with the discovery of hundreds of extra-solar planets orbiting nearby stars [1]. Characterising such astrophysical objects requires the knowledge of physical properties of their main constituents at multi-Mbar pressures and few-eV temperatures (1 eV = 10 605 K). The precondition is the establishment of phase diagrams of these materials, in order to...
High-resolution Resonant Inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) and ultrafast pump-probe techniques using optical or THz radiation have nowadays reached a prominent role for the investigation of strongly correlated materials.
At the intersection of the two worlds, the development of a high energy and high temporal resolution RIXS instrument at the SCS beamline of the European XFEL is a cornerstone...
The human genetic variant BDNF (V66M) represents the first example of neurotrophin family member that has been linked to psychiatric disorders. In order to elucidate structural differences that account for the effects in cognitive function, this hproBDNF polymorph was expressed, refolded, purified and compared directly to the WT variant for the first time for differences in their 3D structures...
From a mineralogical, geological and geodynamical point of view, mineral inclusions trapped inside another minerals are a treasure trove of information that can shed light on processes occurring at depth in the Earth. Entrapped at depth and protected by their host minerals during their ascent to the surface, inclusions are rare and provide pristine samples of regions of the Earth otherwise...
Nuclear receptor binding SET domain (NSD) proteins, a family of three histon lysine methyl transferases, are considered decisive for suppressing currently lethal cancer diseases.[1] Aside from the well characterized catalytic SET domain, NSD have multiple potential chromatin-binding motifs that are clinically relevant, such as the proline-tryptophan-tryptophan-proline (PWWP), the plant...
Fast 4D X-ray imaging is an emerging method that allows seeing fast-changing phenomena in opaque samples. This novel method will enable capturing stochastic phenomena happening at km/s speed into 3D volumetric videos. 2D X-ray phase-contrast microscopy with a sampling rate of 1.128 MHz has already been demonstrated at the European XFEL [1] by attaining videos with micrometer-scale spatial...
The intrusion of molecules or ions into the structural voids of open-framework minerals (i.e. zeolites) was extensively investigated during last decades, due to the potential exploitability in creating new multifunctional materials or to boost industrial catalytic processes [1;2]. These phenomena can have potential implications in Earth Sciences: zeolites are widely spread in the upper oceanic...
Single particle imaging (SPI) using X-ray pulses has become increasingly attainable with the advent of high-intensity free electron lasers. SPI overcomes the need of a crystalline sample, but the extreme intensity of the X-ray pulse causes severe radiation damage to the molecule, leading to coulombic explosion [1]. Diffraction patterns are thus obtained from separate exposures of identical...
Complex liquids are a broad family of materials that cover key roles in several aspects of everyday life, from biological processes that can take place only in such environments to industrial applications that sees complex liquids either as a final product or as a fundamental manufacturing step. From a physicist perspective most of the more interesting phenomena take place at inter-particle...
CaSiO3 wollastonite and its polymorphs are very interesting since they represent the major pure calcium silicate in different geological settings. In the upper-crust, wollastonite and its common polytype parawollastonite (wollastonite 2M) are stable in specific metamorphic reaction zones (skarns), while the high-temperature ambient pressure polymorph pseudowollastonite is associated to Ca-rich...
Heterostructures consisting of HM/CoxFeyBz/HM (HM being heavy metals like Mo, Hf, Ta, W) may develop peculiar properties at the interfaces, such as interfacial Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction (IDMI), Spin Hall effect (SHE), perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA), which are valuable for low power spintronic developments [1]. IDMI is also responsible for chiral domain walls and skyrmions,...
We present a combined femtosecond X-ray emission spectroscopy (fs-XES) and X-ray diffraction (fs-XRD) study of spinel Co3O4, a system representing a prototypical case of the intrinsic complexity of transition metal oxides, due to a correlated response of its nuclear, spin and electronic degrees of freedom.
This material has a normal spinel structure where Co2+ and Co3+ centres are surrounded...
The Hippo pathway is a signaling network, regulating cell growth, proliferation, and apoptosis, involved in tissue homeostasis and organ size control. A central role in this pathway is played by the Yes-Associated Protein (YAP), a DNA transcription co-activator without an intrinsic DNA binding domain. Upon activation of the Hippo pathway, a core kinase-cascade mediates the intracellular...
Photosynthetic glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) is a key enzyme of the Calvin-Benson cycle. In higher plants different photosynthetic GAPDHs exist: the most abundant is formed by hetero-tetramers of A and B-subunits (AB-GAPDH). Being the major consumer of photosynthetic NADPH the enzyme is strictly regulated. The AB-GAPDH is indeed able to turn off its activity through...
Neurotrophic factors are involved in the maintenance and growth of neuronal populations. The first discovered member of neurotrophin (NT) family, Nerve Growth Factor (NGF), is essential for the development and maintenance of neurons and has a crucial role in activation of immune and endocrine systems and in the pain pathway. Mature NGF is expressed as precursor, proNGF, whose pro-peptide is an...
X-rays, thanks to the elemental selectivity coupled with the non-destructiveness, are well known for the investigation of structural and chemical properties of historical artefacts. Synchrotron radiation sources provide high-intensity X-ray beams, with the additional benefit of energy tunability, which is crucial to fully exploit the elemental sensitivity of X-rays. This talk presents several...
Rare Earth Elements (REE, i.e. lanthanides, Y and Sc) are nowadays fundamental components in many technological applications. For their strategic importance and supply risk, REE have been included in the EU list of the so-called “critical raw materials” [1]. This has recently fostered the study of REE minerals, aiming at a deeper understanding of their crystal chemistry, formation and...
Mineral inclusions at ambient conditions often show residual pressures (Pinc) significantly different from the external one. This is the result of the contrast in the thermo-elastic properties between the inclusion and its surrounding host, which can be used to back calculate the pressure (P) and temperature (T) conditions of inclusion entrapment during metamorphic processes. This...
Synchrotron in-situ or operando experiments assume large volumes of experimental information to be collected, visualised, processed and analysed; those volumes increase with advent of new detectors and upgrade of the synchrotron sources. In many cases the data have to be treated during operando experiment to tune physical-chemical processes of interest and optimize the information outcome....
Protoenstatite (PEn) is one of the high temperature forms of MgSiO3 pyroxenes, having stability range from 1200 to 1600 K at ambient pressure. Its importance has been recognized by many authors, in fact PEn is regarded as a precursor phase of low-clinoenstatite (LP-CEn)/orthoenstatite (OEn) intergrowths in some cometary samples [3] and in calcium-aluminum-rich inclusions (CAIs) from CV3...
Current XAFS (X-ray Absorption Fine Structure) data-analysis is based on accurate multiple-scattering (MS) calculations, usually carried out solving the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation for complex effective optical muffin-tin potentials describing the scattering of the atoms. The introduction of relativistic effects in extended XAFS (EXAFS) multiple-scattering calculations has been...
Accessory minerals are able to incorporate trace-elements whose content is affected by factors that include lattice strain, melt polymerization and the water content of the melt. Most of High Field Strength Elements (HFSE) including rare earth elements (REE), yttrium, niobium, and tantalum are used in a vast array of devices such as lasers, electronic screens, permanent magnets, battery...
Nitroxide free radicals (NRs), such as (2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidin-1-yl)oxyl (TEMPO, Fig.1a), are organic radicals stabilized by the delocalization of their unpaired electron between N and O atoms as well as by screening of the paramagnetic center by bulky substituents [1]. They are employed in catalysis [2] and, in chemical synthesis, as initiators in radical-chain polymerization and redox...
The proper management of waste is among the key aspects of the transition of our society to become as environmentally neutral as possible. In Italy, about 30 million tons of urban waste are produced yearly, of which roughly 5 are disposed in incinerators; the incineration process then produces about one million tons of ashes [1].
In general, ashes from municipal solid waste incinerators...
Spectral computed tomography (CT) systems for probing tissue attenuation at different energy levels offer added information to tissue characterization and can help in resolving the ambiguity created when different tissue produce very similar gray levels at a single energy range. Attenuation maps measured at different energy can be used to perform material decomposition and/or compute material...
Sirio Consani,a Donato Belmonte,b Roberto Cabella,b Cristina Carboneb
aDipartimento di Scienze della Terra, Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italy
b aDipartimento di Scienze della Terra, dell’Ambiente e della Vita, Università degli Studi di Genova, Genova, Italy. sirio.consani@dst.unipi.it
The Cu-Fe-Ni-Co sulphide ore deposits hosted in ophiolitic rocks of the Sestri-Voltaggio Zone (Genova,...
X-ray diffraction from powders is one of the most widespread techniques for the qualitative and quantitative analysis of polycrystalline mixtures and solid materials in general. In many cases, traditional methods fail to overcome intrinsic problems of the samples being analyzed (enhanced micro absorption and preferred orientations) or even just sample preparation (little sample, not...
X-ray absorption spectroscopy is a powerful and well-established technique to probe the electronic and structural properties of matter. However, considerable technological difficulties are faced when dealing with liquid phase samples in the XUV/soft x-ray photon energy range, where gas pressures close to the atmospheric ones causes the total extinction of the beam in few mm, leading to the...
The thermodynamic properties of multicomponent liquids at high pressure and temperature (HP-HT) are of paramount importance to elucidate the melting and crystallization phase relations in geological systems. High-pressure melting experiments suffer from uncertainties of hundreds of K and rarely predict the ultimate nature of melting [1]. Ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) gave useful insights...
Recent advances in the application of first principles calculations of NMR parameters to periodic systems [1] and the steady increase of computational power, have become attactrove in their use to support experimental measurement. Such calculations often play an important role in the emerging field of NMR crystallography, where NMR spectroscopy is combined with techniques such as...
The Transient Receptor Potential Melastatin (TRPM) family belongs to the superfamily of TRPcation channels. These targets have increased their scientific interest so much that in 2021, David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch." [1]
This subfamily is composed of eight members that are involved...
Electrochemical CO2 reduction to valuable chemical feedstocks and fuels, powered by the energy from renewable sources, is an attractive possibility for the CO2 minimization in the atmosphere (e.g., at industrial sites where concentrated CO2 is available) but a suitable catalyst is needed. Currently Cu-based catalysts are the only ones that can convert...
The chemical-flexibility, tunable pore size and chemical and structural stability of MOFs can be used to design active sites at the molecular level and to produce heterogeneous catalysts, which can be characterized with atomic precision.[1] In this contribution, we show how advanced characterization at synchrotron sources can be used to reveal the mechanism of formation of UiO-66 under...
Appropriate selection of the crystalline form of an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient (API) is a key decision in developing patient-centered drug products as this influences the safety, efficacy and performance of the pharmaceutical product. On top of these considerations, it is aimed also to facilitate development of robust drug manufacturing processes while guarantying appropriate key quality...
During the last decade X-ray sources experienced a remarkable technical progress that radically extended their achievable scientific horizons with significant impact in many disciplines. As a result, today X-ray sources are no longer intended only as stationary but also as ultrafast pulsed sources for experiments in the sub-picosecond time domain.
A prominent role in this revolution is...
Operando experiments are essential in the field of battery research as they avoid the typical drawbacks of ex situ experiments, such as sample transfer or relaxation reactions, that may occur after opening the electric circuit; alongside the availability of providing sample behaviour under the normal operating conditions in single test cell experiments, avoiding the uncontrolled differences...
EuPRAXIA is a leading European project aimed at the development of a dedicated, ground-breaking, ultra-compact accelerator research infrastructure based on novel plasma acceleration concepts. The INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati will be equipped with an X-band LINAC followed by a plasma wakefield acceleration stage driving the first fifth-generation free electron laser (FEL) source driven...
Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (API) shows the tendency to get order and crystallize as solids in different structures (forms). This phenomenon is known as polymorphism.
In general, different polymorphs show different physicochemical characteristics and properties. Therefore, the selection of the API form for drug product (DP) development is more than critical because the API form itself...
A new machine learning (ML) based web platform, named CrystalMELA (Crystallographic MachinE LeArning), for crystal system classification, has been developed.
In the current version, the tool is able tu run three different and complementary ML models: a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), a Random Forest (RF) and an Extremely randomized trees (ExRT). The models have been trained on theoretical...
In recent years, novel amorphous dosage forms have increasingly been developed by the pharmaceutical industry due to their improved solubility compared to their crystalline counterparts. Because the accurate control of drug phase composition is crucial in pharmaceutical development, researchers face challenges finding suitable analysis techniques to assess this issue when one or more component...
The CO2 electroreduction process (CO2RR) is a promising pathway for the abatement of the CO2 emissions and in the production of valuable chemical feedstock, but suitable catalysts are needed [1]. In the last decade, transition metal-nitrogen-doped carbons have attracted attention as promising electrocatalysts due to their high activity and selectivity for the...
Cocrystals, namely crystalline compounds made of different chemical entities, are typically synthetized in bulk via mechanochemistry. Whereas the macroscopic aspects of grinding are becoming clear,[1] the fundamental principles that underlie mechanochemical cocrystallisation at the microscopic level remain poorly understood.
Time-resolved in situ (TRIS) monitoring approaches have opened the...
Eutectic mixtures have wide industrial importance in many fields including alloys, refrigeration industry, electronics, and chemicals purification. Typically, eutectic mixtures are characterized by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), able to identify the transition temperatures, possible hysteresis and investigate the energetic features of transformations. Despite its fundamental role,...
At the beginning of 2020 the Covid-19 pandemic emergency caused by a newly identified coronavirus universally known as SARS-CoV2 spread out all over the world, changing irreversibly our life style and wellness. In response to the crisis, while everybody was caught off guard by the rapid diffusion of the viral infection and the alarming of death toll worldwide, the global structural biology...
In the panorama of CO2 hydrogenation catalysts, the COZMOS project (https://www.aspire2050.eu/cozmos) is investigating MZrO2-x (M : Zn,Ga) as potential catalysts for CO2-to-methanol conversion. Aliovalent elements ZrO2 doping has been largely exploited to improve catalyst’s properties through oxygen vacancies (Vo) formation. However, whilst great efforts have been done to improve catalyst...
Heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) is a ubiquitous molecular chaperone that stabilizes client proteins in a folded and functional state. Hsp90 uses ATP hydrolysis as a source of energy to perform its cellular activity [1]. Hsp90 is composed of two identical and symmetrical subunits and each monomer consists of three domains, the N-terminal (NTD), the middle (MD), and the C-terminal domain (CTD)....
Diamond Light Source, the UK national synchtotron, currently operates 7 macromolecular crystallography beamlines [1]. The core suite, comprising 4 highly automated beamlines for conventional cryo-crystallography, is complemented by dedicated ones for in-situ room temperature, long wavelength and sub-micron focusing data collection.
Low-level control of equipment is operated by EPICS, while at...
The wide development of Coordination Polymers (CPs) has raised large interest in solid-state and material chemistry. Build upon the combination of organic ligands and metal salts, or clusters, CPs represent functional materials for many useful applications, such as storage, adsorption, sensing and catalysis. [1] Besides the presence of an intrinsic porosity, the possibility to control the...
Drug-induced cardiotoxicity is a common side effect of drugs in clinical use or under post-market surveillance and is commonly due to off-target interactions with the cardiac Human-Ether-a-go-go-Related (hERG) potassium channel. Several ligand-based models were developed in the last years and are today used in the early stages of a drug discovery program for in silico safety assessment of drug...
Annie Hérouxa, Nicola Demitria, Raghurama P Hegdeb, Maurizio Polentaruttia, Giorgio Baisa, Iztok Gregoria, Roberto Borghesa
a
Elettra-Sincrotone Trieste, SS14 Km 163.5 AREA Science Park, Basovizza, 34149, Italy; bGdR IISc-ICTP, Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, SS14 Km 163.5 AREA Science Park, Basovizza, 34149, Italy; annie.heroux@elettra.eu
Even though Elettra Sincrotrone has been around for...
Since the development of the SELEX procedure [1,2], thrombin binding aptamers are among the most studied oligonucleotides with either therapeutics or diagnostics properties [3]. In particular, aptamers (as TBA [4] or NU172 [5]) able to compete with the protein substrate for the binding with exosite I have been or are currently being evaluated in clinical trials for their extraordinary...
Over the last ~50 years, semiconductor epitaxy has shaped our high-tech society. While several epitaxial growth technologies have been successfully used for decades, few have been utilised industrially and are implemented for large-scale, high-volume applications. Metalorganic Vapor Phase Epitaxy (MOVPE) is one of these well-established technologies, underpinning the majority of III-V...
Quantum crystallography is an emerging field of science having the goal of investigating properties and phenomena of the crystalline state that can be explained only if one uses the laws of quantum mechanics [1]. To accomplish this task, several methods have been developed over the years [2]. They range from the traditional multipole model techniques for the determination of experimental...
Structural vaccinology is a rational-based approach to design immunogenic antigens aimed at generating an effective vaccine. It combines experimental methods like X-ray crystallography, molecular biology, electron microscopy and mass spectrometry, with computational methods like molecular modelling and epitope prediction [1-4].
The first step of this approach is the three-dimensional...
The availability of a single crystal diffraction technique for crystals smaller than few microns is a breakthrough both in structural biology and in pharmaceutical sciences. In those disciplines it is quite common to have difficulties in crystallizing large single crystals, therefore the structural studies can be extremely challenging or even impossible. 3D electron diffraction (3D ED) has...
For many years, our research has been focused on saccharide derived Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) with SHG properties and their potential applications as biosensors, because of their high biocompatibility, their lack of inversion symmetry in the crystal structure that induces the SHG properties, and their attitude to complex metal cations and pull polarizable anions into the structure....
X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is a powerful tool for characterisation of local structure and chemical state of selected elements in di fferent new functional materials and biological or environmental samples. The XAS spectroscopy is based on extremely bright synchrotron radiation X-rays sources, which allow precise characterisation of bulk, nanostructured or highly diluted samples. The...
In recent years, supramolecular organic frameworks (SOFs) have emerged as an important class of functional porous materials, alongside metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs) [1,2]. Herein we report a dynamic responsive SOF obtained through the self-assembly of rigid aromatic tetrahedral molecules (tetra-4-(4-pyridil)phenylmethane, TPPM) via van der Waals...
Last decades the fabrication of self-assembly quantum dots (QDs) was attracted for photonic device application. QD can be used as an ideal source for the generation of entangled photon pairs, which are necessary building blocks for the long-distance fully secured quantum key distribution.
We present the fabrication and the precise structure characterization by means of HR-XRD mapping and AFM...
Pyridoxal 5′-phosphate (PLP) is an enzyme cofactor required in a large number of metabolic processes, and its amount needs to be finely tuned in response to cell requirements.
A bacterial transcription factor of the MocR family, PdxR, plays a fundamental role in the regulation of the de novo biosynthesis of PLP in many bacteria, acting as either an activator of the PLP synthase complex or...
Growing three-dimensional epitaxial nanostructures opens a new world of opportunities, unique properties and novel designs for next-generation semiconductor devices. However, the increased complexity and wide variability of parameters to be controlled in order to achieve the desired structures demand for an in-depth understanding of the growth mechanism. In particular, the morphology of the...
In our continued interest and search for new functional Coordination Networks (CNs) [1,2] we have designed and synthetized a new ligand containing the β-diketone fragment in the center and peripheral nitrile groups at nanometric distance (HL) (Fig. 1a). In the solid state HL adopt a helical arrangement and crystallize in the acentric space group Cc. The coordination ability of HL towards...
The 130 kDa ER Degradation Enhancing Mannosidase (EDEM) selectively de-mannosylates an N-linked glycan on terminally misfolded glycoproteins, thereby dispatching it to retrotranslocation, cytosolic ubiquitination, and proteasome degradation. EDEM activity depends on association with a 60 kDa Protein Disulphide Isomerase (PDI) to form the EDEM:PDI heterodimer [1-3]. No EDEM selective inhibitors...
The new challenges of the green economy are related at high efficiency power converters for energy efficiency, electrical mobility and connectivity high speed (5G). These applications required new technological approach and new and more efficient materials on which to develop these devices. Wide band gap materials are becoming increasingly important for their characteristics and the excellent...
Targeting, in silico, the RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) of Dengue virus, we selected a class of pyridobenzothiazolones (PBTZs, from a proprietary library), which showed broad-spectrum antiflaviviral activity. In contrast to the enzyme kinetic measurements that showed a non-competitive inhibition, the X-Ray crystal structure of the targeted RdRp in complex with one PBTZ, suggested a...
The conventional conception of crystalline materials as static and brittle started to dramatically change with the serendipitous discovery of crystals exhibiting exceptional stimuli-driven mechanical motions.[1] While thermo- and photosalient dynamic effects have been known for more than 50 years, mechanically induced elastic and plastic responses were relatively recently discovered.[2]...
Research on ultrathin quantum materials requires full control of the growth and surface quality of the specimens in order to perform experiments on their atomic structure and electron states leading to ultimate analysis of their intrinsic properties [1-2]. We report results on epitaxial FeSe thin films grown by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) on CaF2 (001) substrates as obtained by exploiting...
A variety of non-covalent interactions, such as hydrophobic effect, hydrogen bonding, Coulombic contacts, and van der Waals interactions, influence the proper protein folding [1]. Many investigations have shown that these conventional forces cannot be the only ones influencing protein folding, implying the involvement of weaker interactions. Thus, a plethora of "non-conventional" forces such...
Recent advances in automation and method development at synchrotron facilities has allowed the development of different data collection pipelines and plate-to-beam applications to respond to modern structural biology projects and to improve the efficiency for high throughput applications [1, 2]. This dynamic change in scientific needs, as well as the increased interest in structural data at...
OBJECTIVE: This study aims at characterizing mineral depositions in the early phase of bone biomineralization in SaOS-2 osteosarcoma cell line. Cryo-soft X-ray tomography (Cryo-STX) and cryo-XANES at the CaL2,3 edges imaging were combined to investigate the evolution of the Ca-depositions during differentiation. A deeper knowledge of the early phase of bone formation and its mineral...
The use of pesticides for chemical treatment of plants and soil is still an alarming issue since contributes to the accumulation of harmful by-products in the environment [1]. Some of most sustainable and effective alternatives have been found in essential oil (EOs), which are natural compounds based on terpenoids and directly produced by plants. EOs have been shown antibacterial, antifungal...
Recent progress in pharmacology, plant biology and biotechnology has led to a dramatic increase in potency and specificity of new generation drugs, active agrochemical ingredients and food nutraceuticals. Unfortunately, this has been accompanied by poor bioavailability and water solubility: it is estimated that around 40% of the active pharmaceutical ingredients currently on the market and 60%...
Glycation is the most important long-term reaction that leads to the structural and functional alterations of collagen macromolecules in diabetic tissues. It is due to a hyperglycemic condition, more than 110mg/dL of sugar in blood, over a long period and consists of the non-enzymatic formation of sugar bridges between sugars and biological macromolecules, leading to loss of physiological and...
Exactly 15 years ago, in September 2007, the beamline MCX (Material Characterisation by X-ray diffraction) was officially inaugurated at the Italian synchrotron facility, Elettra – Sincrotrone Trieste. The powder diffraction beamline was designed to study nanostructured materials, investigating details of crystalline domain size and shape, lattice defects, and local atomic displacement of...
During the COVID-19 pandemic, structural biologists rushed to solve the structures of the 28 proteins encoded by the SARS-CoV-2 genome in order to understand the viral life cycle and to enable structure-based drug design. In addition to the 204 previously solved structures from SARS-CoV-1, over 2000 structures covering SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins have been released in a span of a 2 years. As...
In the past decade, (nano)technology applications to the central nervous system have often involved studying and using novel materials to modulate neuronal activity. The ability to govern neuronal excitability could have a significant impact not only on fundamental neurophysiology but in developing therapeutic approaches to treat neurological diseases. Surface (nano)modification via...
Promoting and divulging science at all levels of education is a fundamental part of scientific activity, not the least in the field of crystallography. For this purpose, during the ECM in Basel in September 2016 GIG3 – The General Interest Group on Education in Crystallography was launched. The main objectives of GIG3 are the creation of a network for the efficient coordination of common...
Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) deal with mixtures of two or more compounds which, for a well-defined molar ratio, display a unique and minimum melting point that is lower than the ideally predicted one, allowing the achievement of a liquid phase even from solid starting materials. This behavior relies on the extensive interplay among the components, so that it has become evident that DESs are...
Cinnabar is the principal mineral contains mercury in the form of mercury sulphide (HgS); it is characterized by a bright red color and it was one of the most important reds in art. It is found fairly widely, but not abundantly [1]. Among all the sources dealing with cinnabar [2], there is a large variety that describes its synthesis, which often requires a first step of grinding the reagents,...
The past two and a half years have been extremely challenging for the global world population, with the ongoing pandemic impacting every single aspect of one’s life. Numerous restrictions moved almost all the activities to an online environment and therefore kept us positioned mostly in front of the screens. The overall scientific community was also greatly affected, as the pandemic caused the...
Electron diffraction (3D-ED, MicroED) is gaining more and more momentum as a technique for the structural elucidation of challenging compounds as it bypasses the main limitation of growing crystals of suitable size for single-crystal X-ray diffraction. As such it has already found applications in all fields of research from organic and inorganic compounds, over polymorphism, pharmacology,...
Chemical reactions mainly occur in solution and the use of different techniques to monitor the advancement of a chemical process in the liquid phase is often a powerful tool to gain a satisfactory understanding of the underlying reaction mechanism. Among the spectroscopic techniques that have been applied to follow chemical reactions occurring in solution, X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS)...
The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has declared its 2022 theme as ‘The Power of Museums’. This is declined in three lines: The power of achieving sustainability: Museums are strategic partners in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. As key actors in their local communities, they contribute to a wide variety of Goals, which include fostering...
In the past 20 years gold nanorods (AuNRs) gained popularity within the nanomaterials field also thanks, among the several valuable properties, to the tunability they provide with a two-component surface plasmon resonance (SPR), associated respectively to the Transversal and Longitudinal components of the plasmon which, in turn, are related to the specific dimensions and aspect ratio obtained....
In the last few years, a series of learning paths for high school students from 16 to 19 years old has been tested thanks to a national network of researchers of the Italian National Research Council collaboratively working in the framework of national and european Projects targeted to youngsters.[1] The main goal is to increase the interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and...
Manganese Hexacyanoferrate (MnHCF) as promising electrode material has been wildly used as a cathode in organic Na-ion batteries, and displaying large specific capacity (>130 mAhg-1) and high discharge potential [1]. However, the phase and structure changes of MnHCF associated with the electrochemical reaction, especially the Jahn-Teller (JT) distortion of Mn-sites during the charge process,...
Metal−organic frameworks (MOFs) are widely studied nanoporous materials obtained from the coordination of metal ions or clusters (nodes) to polydentate organic molecules (linkers). This interaction yields three-dimensional structures featuring pores with ultrahigh internal surface areas (up to 10 000 m2 g-1) and highly reactive metal sites, to be exploited in a vast...
X-ray crystallography has been developed as the main experimental technique to investigate the 3D structure of proteins, giving knowledge at atomic resolution of the molecular details of macromolecules. Nevertheless, still many people even among the scientific community ignore the basic principles of X-ray crystallography that allow to use a diffraction pattern to build the electron density...
