Conformational Dynamics of metallo-β-lactamase CcrA during Catalysis Investigated by Using DEER Spectroscopy

Previous crystallographic and mutagenesis studies have implicated the role of a position-conserved hairpin loop in the metallo-β-lactamases in substrate binding and catalysis. In an effort to probe the motion of that loop during catalysis, rapid-freeze-quench double electron–electron resonance (RFQ-DEER) spectroscopy was used to interrogate metallo-β-lactamase CcrA, which had a spin label at position 49 on the loop and spin labels (at positions 82, 126, or 233) 20–35 Å away from residue 49, during catalysis. At 10 ms after mixing, the DEER spectra show distance increases of 7, 10, and 13 Å between the spin label at position 49 and the spin labels at positions 82, 126, and 233, respectively. In contrast to previous hypotheses, these data suggest that the loop moves nearly 10 Å away from the metal center during catalysis and that the loop does not clamp down on the substrate during catalysis. This study demonstrates that loop motion during catalysis can be interrogated on the millisecond time scale

Ferrocene-derived P,N ligands : synthesis and application in enantioselective catalysis

Due to their unique steric and electronic properties, air-stability and modular structure, chiral hybrid P,N-ferrocenyl ligands play a prominent role in the field of asymmetric catalysis. This report aims to give a concise introduction to the syntheses of chiral hybrid P,N-ferrocenyl ligands and presents an overview of their application in enantioselective catalysis. This review is of special interest to chemists working on ligand design and asymmetric catalysis, as well as to the broader organic and inorganic community

Inverse Magnetic Catalysis in Bottom-Up Holographic QCD

We explore the effect of magnetic field on chiral condensation in QCD via a simple bottom up holographic model which inputs QCD dynamics through the running of the anomalous dimension of the quark bilinear. Bottom up holography is a form of effective field theory and we use it to explore the dependence on the coefficients of the two lowest order terms linking the magnetic field and the quark condensate. In the massless theory, we identify a region of parameter space where magnetic catalysis occurs at zero temperature but inverse magnetic catalysis at temperatures of order the thermal phase transition. The model shows similar non-monotonic behaviour in the condensate with B at intermediate T as the lattice data. This behaviour is due to the separation of the meson melting and chiral transitions in the holographic framework. The introduction of quark mass raises the scale of B where inverse catalysis takes over from catalysis until the inverse catalysis lies outside the regime of validity of the effective description leaving just catalysis.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figure

Search for Nucleon Decays induced by GUT Magnetic Monopoles with the MACRO Experiment

The interaction of a Grand Unification Magnetic Monopole with a nucleon can lead to a barion-number violating process in which the nucleon decays into a lepton and one or more mesons (catalysis of nucleon decay). In this paper we report an experimental study of the effects of a catalysis process in the MACRO detector. Using a dedicated analysis we obtain new magnetic monopole (MM) flux upper limits at the level of $\sim 3\cdot 10^{-16} cm^{-2} s^{-1} sr^{-1}$ for $1.1\cdot 10^{-4} \le |\beta| \le 5\cdot 10^{-3}$, based on the search for catalysis events in the MACRO data. We also analyze the dependence of the MM flux limit on the catalysis cross section.Comment: 12 pages, Latex, 10 figures and 2 Table

Effect of catalytic conditions on the synthesis of new aconitate esters

Sugar cane is a crop which generates large amounts of biomass and a juice rich in highvalue natural molecules. After extracting sugar from the juice, the recovering of various compounds such as organic acids contained in molasses could contribute to increase the competivity of the sugar industry. Therefore, according to the biorefinery approach, we propose to study the chemical conversion of one of these acids, the aconitic acid, by esterification reactions. A new series of aconitate esters have been synthesized by combining aconitic acid and alcohols from natural origin. The effects of experimental conditions have been investigated and have shown that the type of catalysis has a significant effect on the selectivity. Kinectics have thus been performed to determine the best conditions to synthetize enriched compositions in esters. Homogeneous catalysis generates the highest yield in triester. Heterogeneous catalysis(macroporous resins) is prefered for the production of monoesters while catalysis assisted by ionic liquid is adapted to prepare mainly diesters. Green indicators have been discussed according to the calculations performed. The resulting polyfunctional esters are totally biosourced molecules and have a great potential as bioproducts for different applications

Magnetic catalysis in flavored ABJM

We study the magnetic catalysis of chiral symmetry breaking in the ABJM Chern-Simons matter theory with unquenched flavors in the Veneziano limit. We consider a magnetized D6-brane probe in the background of a flavored black hole which includes the backreaction of massless smeared flavors in the ABJM geometry. We find a holographic realization for the running of the quark mass due to the dynamical flavors. We compute several thermodynamic quantities of the brane probe and analyze the effects of the dynamical quarks on the fundamental condensate and on the phase diagram of the model. The dynamical flavors have an interesting effect on the magnetic catalysis. At zero temperature and fixed magnetic field, the magnetic catalysis is suppressed for small bare quark masses whereas it is enhanced for large values of the mass. When the temperature is non-zero there is a critical magnetic field, above which the magnetic catalysis takes place. This critical magnetic field decreases with the number of flavors, which we interpret as an enhancement of the catalysis.Comment: 33 pages, 11 figures; v2: refs added; v3: revised version, new subsection on running mass added, discussion clarifie