Towards a Synthetic Chloroplast

The evolution of eukaryotic cells is widely agreed to have proceeded through a series of endosymbiotic events between larger cells and proteobacteria or cyanobacteria, leading to the formation of mitochondria or chloroplasts, respectively. Engineered endosymbiotic relationships between different species of cells are a valuable tool for synthetic biology, where engineered pathways based on two species could take advantage of the unique abilities of each mutualistic partner.We explored the possibility of using the photosynthetic bacterium Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 as a platform for studying evolutionary dynamics and for designing two-species synthetic biological systems. We observed that the cyanobacteria were relatively harmless to eukaryotic host cells compared to Escherichia coli when injected into the embryos of zebrafish, Danio rerio, or taken up by mammalian macrophages. In addition, when engineered with invasin from Yersinia pestis and listeriolysin O from Listeria monocytogenes, S. elongatus was able to invade cultured mammalian cells and divide inside macrophages.Our results show that it is possible to engineer photosynthetic bacteria to invade the cytoplasm of mammalian cells for further engineering and applications in synthetic biology. Engineered invasive but non-pathogenic or immunogenic photosynthetic bacteria have great potential as synthetic biological devices

CCDC 1550787: Experimental Crystal Structure Determination

Related Article: Kyle Fulle, Liurukara. D. Sanjeewa, Colin D. McMillen, Yimei Wen, Apeksha C. Rajamanthrilage, Jeffrey N. Anker, George Chumanov, Joseph W. Kolis|2017|Inorg.Chem.|56|6044|doi:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.7b00821,An entry from the Cambridge Structural Database, the world’s repository for small molecule crystal structures. The entry contains experimental data from a crystal diffraction study. The deposited dataset for this entry is freely available from the CCDC and typically includes 3D coordinates, cell parameters, space group, experimental conditions and quality measures

CCDC 1550788: Experimental Crystal Structure Determination

Related Article: Kyle Fulle, Liurukara. D. Sanjeewa, Colin D. McMillen, Yimei Wen, Apeksha C. Rajamanthrilage, Jeffrey N. Anker, George Chumanov, Joseph W. Kolis|2017|Inorg.Chem.|56|6044|doi:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.7b00821,An entry from the Cambridge Structural Database, the world’s repository for small molecule crystal structures. The entry contains experimental data from a crystal diffraction study. The deposited dataset for this entry is freely available from the CCDC and typically includes 3D coordinates, cell parameters, space group, experimental conditions and quality measures

One-Pot Hydrothermal Synthesis of Tb^III₁₃(GeO₄)₆O₇(OH) and K₂Tb^IVGe₂O₇: Preparation of a Stable Terbium(4+) Complex

Two terbium germanates have been synthesized via high-temperature and high-pressure hydrothermal synthesis with 20 M KOH as a mineralizer using Tb₄O₇ as a starting material. Tb₁₃(GeO₄)₆O₇(OH) crystallizes in trigonal space group <i>R</i>3̅, is built up of isolated GeO₄ units, and contains a complex arrangement of terbium oxide polyhedra. K₂TbGe₂O₇ is a terbium­(4+) pyrogermanate that is isostructural with K₂ZrGe₂O₇ and displays a rare stable Tb⁴⁺ oxidation state in the solid state