New paper describing our time resolved SFX studies with spectroscopic validation through XES to propose new intermediates in heme peroxidases. A large team of researchers led by Essex and Diamond @jarworrall.bsky.social @diamondlightsource.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

New paper out on modulating redox states in heme peroxidases in synchrotron and XFEL experiments journals.iucr.org/d/issues/202... - nice collaboration with @jarworrall.bsky.social using PAL-FEL and DLS I24

Quite a bit of work to get this to publication... but here you go. #protein #dynamics 🧪 How a protein repurposes vitamin B12 as a light sensor www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Just out: Minimized sample consumption for time-resolved serial crystallography applied to the redox cycle of human NQO1

Rare work related post. Increasing X-ray energy improves data quality in serial #crystallography 🧪 journals.iucr.org/s/issues/202...

We have a fixed term beamline scientist post available at VMXi, Diamond. The successful applicant will join the team at a dedicated room temperature MX beamline and help with user experiments in fragment screening and time resolved serial crystallography. vacancies.diamond.ac.uk/vacancy/beam...

Very cool structures, congrats to all! #microsky Link seemed broken though so here's a working one: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Vincent, Morra, and Rodríguez-Maciá demonstrate that truncating the electron transfer domain of [FeFe]-hydrogenase does *not* diminish their catalytic efficiency (via ACS Catalysis). doi.org/10.1021/acsc...

I am very excited to share our new preprint - "A Zundel Ion in the Catalytic Proton Transfer Pathway of [FeFe]-Hydrogenase" - for which we revisited an older theory of ours, and came to surprising conclusions... 🧵 doi.org/10.26434/che...

Cellulose biosynthesis and function in Streptomyces @cp-trendsmicrobiol.bsky.social by Chennan Yang, @xiaobozhong.bsky.social and Dennis Claessen www.cell.com/trends/micro...

The effort adopts community tools like FindGeo (MetalPDB) and MetalCoord (CCP4). Details and example files are available at wwPDB.org . For queries: [email protected]

Metalloproteins make up ~30% of the PDB archive. To ensure FAIR data practices, wwPDB is remediating existing polyatomic metal-containing entries and CCDs — improving their chemical and coordination descriptions for better findability and reuse.

I enjoyed contributing to this article from the @jarworrall.bsky.social lab at the @universityofessex.bsky.social during a visit over their summer. A first foray for me into P450 peroxygenase fatty acid decarboxylases to make alkenes from fatty acids. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Our first foray into the P450 world. Thanks to @bellp450enzyme.bsky.social for sharpening our GC-MS skill set @jamesbirrell.bsky.social for the microwaves😃 and Lewis for persevering 🧪

Delightful combination of spectroscopies (electronic, microwave) and protein crystallography in @jarworrall.bsky.social's new paper on cytochrome P450 decarboxylase from Staphylococcus aureus 🤩 doi.org/10.1016/j.ji...

How do protons get delivered to the active site of heme peroxidases? A combination of solvent channels and electric fields, say @petermoody.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

Recent paper showing the power of combining advanced structural biology with QM/MM simulations to understand a heme enzyme. Work between Diamond, STFC, Bristol and Essex. We present evidence for the presence of an unusual protein to heme cross-link. pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

New paper describing use of photocaged nitric oxide for time resolved crystallography within fixed targets at XFEL and synchrotron - PhD work of Pete Smyth & Lewis Williams - great collaboration with @jarworrall.bsky.social, beamline I24 and SACLA. Funded by BBSRC journals.iucr.org/m/issues/202...

For those on #chemsky interested in metal binding peptides and enzyme mimics, check out our latest paper doi.org/10.1002/anie.... A huge thanks to all co-authors, in particular the amazing Enrico Falcone!

Exploring the 'jigglings and wigglings' that help explain what proteins are really up to – and it's anything but static.

We are delighted to confirm that the and Other Redox Metalloenzymes will take place from 26-30 July 2026 at the University of Leicester, UK. Details of the conference, including regularly updated confirmed speakers, are available on our website (link in bio).

Genetically modified E coli used to create painkillers from material produced from plastic bottles www.theguardian.com/...

Thrilled to have this work published! Thanks to some awesome teamwork, we've demonstrated improvements in multi-crystal data clustering by automatically separating 🐮🐷🧑‍🔬 #multicrystal #clustering #crystallography doi.org/10.1107/S205...

Out now in @chemicalscience.rsc.org: We apply 2DIR spectroscopy to study [FeFe] hydrogenase for the first time. Check it out! pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

Every year I co-organise a popular protein engineering workshop with @Biochemsoc.bsky.social - this year we will be in Birmingham 18-19 Nov. Booking hasn't opened yet but interest can be registered here. We had a wonderful group last year-join us! www.biochemistry.org/events-and-t...

Our new paper exploring the effect of XFEL pulse length and pulse intensity on electron density maps of two radiation sensitive proteins. A great collaboration between Diamond, SwissFEL and University of Essex's Worrall group. journals.iucr.org/m/issues/202...

Participants in the annual serial crystallography workshop for graduates student some funded by our @wellcometrust.bsky.social PhD program have got homework to do in the evening time …. @diamondlightsource.bsky.social @instruct-eric.bsky.social

Big day today! Excited to share our new publication in @chemcomm.rsc.org about the formation of the very important hydride state in [FeFe] hydrogenases! Enjoy the reading! ☺️ pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

Redox control of antibiotic biosynthesis in Streptomyces. Remarkable work led by @katienoble241.bsky.social and Rebecca Devine demonstrates why antibiotic biosynthesis is often switched on in solid cultures and off in liquid. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Important paper. This could be the missing link that mediates the effects of nitric oxide gas on sporulation and antibiotic production in Streptomyces species.

A winters morning at SACLA ❄️

Our editorial for the collection on microbial iron metabolism and iron-containing proteins is online now. Check it out! Great collaboration with my colleague Haichun Gao and Tobias Goris www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Here the authors show that the assembly of [2Fe-2S] clusters by the ISC machinery proceeds by formation and fusion of [1Fe-1S] intermediates in the IscU scaffold protein www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Very happy to present our latest work by Tijn van der Velden and co-workers. Cytochrome bd from Mycobacterium tuberculosis has been studied for a while, but nobody was able to show catalytic activity of the purified enzyme: Find out why here in our JBC paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Disorganised proteins and peptides have identical interactions with strings of L- and D-amino acids. www.chemistryworld.com/news/debunke...

#Bioenergetics The Christmas Bioenergetics meeting at university of Essex🎅

A new program, MetalCoord, is described that classifies and utilizes the metal-coordination geometry and has been used to update metal-containing components from the CCP4 monomer library #Refinement #Restraints #MetalCoordinationGeometry t.co/GEAMKSEpTc

Save The Date! #Dalton2025 conference will be held at the University of Warwick on April 1-3, 2025 Registration will be online soon 👇 www.rsc.org/events/detai...

Our review on bacterial metallostasis is now online in Chemical Reviews! This collaboration by the Giedroc (@betainverse.bsky.social and @jsrocchio.bsky.social) and Capdevila labs delves into bacterial metal regulation. 🦠 #Microbiology #ChemicalReviews #BacterialMetallostasis doi.org/10.1021/acs....

This has been a topic for many people in Berlin during the 2010s but was never fully realized. Now, Jeuken et al. report on photosynthetic lipid "nanoreactors" that contain [FeFe]-hydrogenase for H2 release (via JACS). doi.org/10.1021/jacs...

I have a PhD position available in my group, to start in March 2025. If you have a keen interest in biochemistry and would like to study an exciting and novel class of copper proteins (aka weird Cu tubes) from bacteria, I'd love to hear from you. You should apply here: ibb.edu.pl/app/uploads/...

Final call for early abstracts is tomorrow!

Just when I thought, This year I won't travel much, I was reminded of Long Beach... www.icbic21.org

Come and join us for a PhD exploring the design of new MRI contrast agents based on metallo peptides www.findaphd.com/phds/project... Please get in touch if you have any questions

The Accounts of Chemical Research on our work on transition metal hydricity is finally out! Thanks to GS (soon to be Dr.) Andrew Cypcar who put in a tremendous amount of work to get it finished! pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10....

I'm happy to share @brenlab.bsky.social's Current Opinion in Chemical Biology piece on Engineered Metallobiocatalysts for Energy: authors.elsevier.com/a/1k9kf4sz6M...

Isle of Harris

Lews Castle Stornoway looking cold

We're recruiting two PDRAs (one computational and one experimental) to join the project "Designer metallo coiled coils for use in MRI" - closing date Dec.12th. Please get in touch if you'd like to know more. @uobchemistry.bsky.social www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DKS611/r... www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DKS605/r...

Heartbreaking news. Another 170 job losses announced yesterday by UEA. This follows the voluntary severance and compulsory redundancies made in 2023. UEA is also losing staff because a lot of their best people are jumping ship. Is this going to happen every year until nothing is left?