INFLUENCE OF LIGNIN EXTRACT ON THE ACTIVITY OF ENZYMES, RELATED TO CARBOHYDRATE AND PEPTIDE DIGESTION

In cooperation with the Latvian Institute of Wood Chemistry, the following research work shows quantitative experiments in investigation of affect of different concentrations of Lignin on the activity of enzymes Pepsin and ? - Amylase. All experiments are made “in vitro” and corresponding environments were simulated. The long – term aim of this research project is, to give evidence about the different effects of lignin on human enzymes to establish a cost – efficiently, natural drug. This research work is related to the European COST program, action CM0804: Chemical Biology with Natural Products: "The main objective of the Action is to advance the use of natural products as tools for chemical biology. Applying modern techniques and advancing them, natural products will prove to be instrumental in discovering target proteins and biological pathways that are of relevance to diseases. This in turn, should facilitate and speed up subsequent drug discovery efforts in the pharmaceutical industry."

Synthesis and characterisation of alpha-carboxynitrobenzyl photocaged l-aspartates for applications in time-resolved structural biology

We report a new synthetic route to a series of α-carboxynitrobenzyl photocaged ⌊-aspartates for application in time-resolved structural biology. The resulting compounds were characterised in terms of UV/Vis absorption properties, aqueous solubility and stability, and photocleavage rates (τ = μs to ms) and quantum yields (φ = 0.05 to 0.14)

TakeTwo: an indexing algorithm suited to still images with known crystal parameters.

The indexing methods currently used for serial femtosecond crystallography were originally developed for experiments in which crystals are rotated in the X-ray beam, providing significant three-dimensional information. On the other hand, shots from both X-ray free-electron lasers and serial synchrotron crystallography experiments are still images, in which the few three-dimensional data available arise only from the curvature of the Ewald sphere. Traditional synchrotron crystallography methods are thus less well suited to still image data processing. Here, a new indexing method is presented with the aim of maximizing information use from a still image given the known unit-cell dimensions and space group. Efficacy for cubic, hexagonal and orthorhombic space groups is shown, and for those showing some evidence of diffraction the indexing rate ranged from 90% (hexagonal space group) to 151% (cubic space group). Here, the indexing rate refers to the number of lattices indexed per image

Observation of counterion effects and dimensionality reduction in single-crystal (EDO-TTF)

Femtosecond electron diffraction is used to resolve structural dynamics in single-crystal (EDO-TTF)2XF6 (X = P, Sb). The retarded and lower-dimensional dynamics of the latter illustrate the dominant role of counterion motion in stabilizing electron transfer

Observation of counterion effects and dimensionality reduction in single-crystal (EDO-TTF)2SbF6 with ultrafast electron diffraction

Femtosecond electron diffraction is used to resolve structural dynamics in single-crystal (EDO-TTF)2XF6 (X = P, Sb). The retarded and lower-dimensional dynamics of the latter illustrate the dominant role of counterion motion in stabilizing electron transfer

TakeTwo: an indexing algorithm suited to still images with known crystal parameters

The indexing methods currently used for serial femtosecond crystallography were originally developed for experiments in which crystals are rotated in the X-ray beam, providing significant three-dimensional information. On the other hand, shots from both X-ray free-electron lasers and serial synchrotron crystallography experiments are still images, in which the few three-dimensional data available arise only from the curvature of the Ewald sphere. Traditional synchrotron crystallography methods are thus less well suited to still image data processing. Here, a new indexing method is presented with the aim of maximizing information use from a still image given the known unit-cell dimensions and space group. Efficacy for cubic, hexagonal and orthorhombic space groups is shown, and for those showing some evidence of diffraction the indexing rate ranged from 90% (hexagonal space group) to 151% (cubic space group). Here, the indexing rate refers to the number of lattices indexed per image