X-ray Spectrometry / Ezine
Genetics beyond the genome: epigenetic structural insight
Date: Feb 1, 2011
Author: David Bradley
Epigenetics is the field of science aimed at understanding how some genes are regulated without changes to the underlying DNA code occurring. Now, work that helps decipher some of the ways in which enzymes act on the proteins surrounding DNA within cells reveals through X-ray diffraction how an acetylation complex fits like a halo over a histone in the enzyme-substrates.
Read More
Seeing DVDs in a new light: X-ray reading
Date: Jan 15, 2011
Author: David Bradley
Although few of us will not have played a DVD and perhaps even fewer mused at the colourful reflections from the surface of an optical disk. However, little is known about the detailed structural changes that take place when data are stored on such optical media. Now, researchers in Finland and Japan have turned to synchrotrons, X-ray spectroscopy, and simulations to shed light on this phenomenon.
Read More
Journal Highlight: Hawk: the image reconstruction package for coherent X-ray diffractive imaging
Date: Jan 10, 2011
Author:
Hawk is the first publicly available and fully open source software program for reconstructing images from continuous diffraction patterns. The software handles all steps leading from a raw diffraction pattern to a reconstructed two-dimensional image.
Read More
Taxing enzyme: Crystallography reveals biomolecular link
Date: Jan 5, 2011
Author: David Bradley
The crystal structure of taxadiene synthase, an enzyme key to terpene biosynthesis in many living organisms, confirms a theoretically predicted link between two enzyme classes in the evolution of compounds such as the natural product anticancer drug Taxol.
Read More
X-ray future: low noise and colour
Date: Dec 15, 2010
Author: David Bradley
X-rays are incredibly useful in diagnostic imaging but also come at a price because they are ionising and so have potential to damage tissues. In work that combines informatics, quantum mechanics, and X-rays, researchers have found a way to cut the noise and so obtain far better X-ray images without increasing radiation dose.
Read More
Journal Highlight: Characterization of foliar manganese (Mn) in Mn (hyper)accumulators using X-ray absorption spectroscopy
Date: Dec 6, 2010
Author:
This investigation employed synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) in a comparative study of Mn (hyper)accumulators, to elucidate in situ the chemical form(s) of foliar Mn in seven woody species from Australia, New Caledonia and Japan.
Read More
Gas storage: X-ray structure shows improved hydrogen storage material
Date: Dec 1, 2010
Author: David Bradley
Solid materials rich in hydrogen, such as ammonia borane could solve the gas storage problem for vehicle fuel cells. Now, a crystal structure of an alternative material, DADB, offers new hope of a stable material that works at lower temperature (85 rather than 110 Celsius).
Read More
Protein microspheres: amorphously yours with SAXS
Date: Nov 15, 2010
Author: David Bradley
A simple, inexpensive, and gentle process can be used to make pure protein microspheres of uniform size for therapeutic use. Microspheres of insulin for instance, shown to be amorphous by X-ray scattering (SAXS), could have advantages over other experimental delivery modes, the study's authors suggest.
Read More
Fertility testing: profiling with NMR
Date: Nov 15, 2010
Author: David Bradley
Traditional clinical tests on seminal fluid for infertility and sub-fertility prediction do not provide insights into underlying problems. Metabolic NMR tests could offer a less time-consuming and less labour-intensive alternative.
Read More
X-ray specular scattering from statistically rough surfaces: a novel theoretical approach based on the Green function formalism
Date: Nov 8, 2010
Author:
The Green function formalism was applied to the problem of grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering from statistically rough surfaces, using Kirchhoff's integral equation to describe the X-ray wavefield propagation through a single rough surface separating vacuum and medium.
Read More
