News Library
Dixon group in JBC describing structural characterisation of protein in complex with HIV-derived oligosaccharide
Magic Clusters in Angewandte Chemie
An inter-university collaboration between the Costantini, Jones, Bonifazi (Namur) and de Vita (King’s College) groups showed the role of deprotonation on the two dimensional assembly of novel borazine compounds on a copper substrate. The results are published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
Costantini and Wills Groups on Cover of ChemComm
Collaboration between the Costantini and Wills groups investigates the dissociation of a newly synthesised, novel chiral ester on metallic substrates. The products of dissociation are directly imaged by scanning tunnelling microscopy allowing for the delineation of the cleavage mechanism as seen in ChemComm.
Polymers which thinks they're antifreeze proteins
The Gibson group have undertaken a detailed study into the ability of synthetic polymers to inhibit the growth of ice crystals - this is a fundmental process of incredible importance in biology (survival of extremophiles), medicine (cryoprotectection of cells/organs) and industry (preventing ice-induced damage). The Gibson group are pioneering the use of polymers as alternative to antifreeze proteins - Nature's cryoprotectants, using a combination of chemical, analytical, biological and computational methods
Read their latest paper here, in collaboration with R. Notman (CSC): http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/bm400217j
Della Pia and Costantini feature in Springer Surface Science Techniques book
Ada Della Pia and Giovanni Costantini publish the Scanning Tunnelling Microscopy chapter for the Springer Surface Science Techniques book, Gianangelo Bracco and Bodil Holst (ed).
Structural Details of Antibiotics Unveiled by FTICR-M
The O’Connor and Tosin groups have published work on the use of high mass accuracy tandem mass spectrometry for characterising the structures of polyketides, including erythromycin A, lasalocid A and iso-lasalocid A. They report in Analytical Chemistry on the use of Collision Activated Dissociation (CAD) and Electron Induced Dissociation (EID) as tools for determining structural information on these types of molecules. EID was shown to cause greater fragmentation of the compounds, complementary to that obtained using CAD, leading to more detailed structural information being obtained. These techniques were also combined in multistage mass spectrometry experiments, in order to use the fragmentation patterns to distinguish between lasalocid A and its isomer, iso-lasalcoid A. This work illustrates the potential of these tools and will be applied to identifying unknown polyketides and their biosynthetic intermediates.
The full article can be found at: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ac3022778
Two photons are better than one
Sadler and Stavros groups in collaboration with Prof Martin Paterson at Heriot-Watt University, publish work in Angewandte Chemie International Edition. The work describes the first demonstration of a 2-photon activated, square planar platinum (II) complex. The enhanced photolabilization demonstrated may be useful in the design of novel photoactivatable platinum chemotherapeutic agents in situations where deep tissue penetration is needed. Read the article here.
Atomic structure of MnSi thin films revealed
Costantini and co-workers publish in Physical Review B the results of a combined experimental-theoretical work that sheds light on the atomic scale-structure of MnSi thin films grown on Si(111).
Costantini features in Springer Encyclopedia of Nanotechnology
Ada Della Pia and Giovanni Costantini publish the Scanning Tunneling Microscopy entry for the Springer Encyclopedia of Nanotechnology, Bharat Bhushan (ed).
Rebecca Wills wins WATE-PGR
Congratulations to PhD student Becky Wills, selected over more than 100 nominations as a winner of the PG Warwick Award for Teaching Excellence
Doubling the resolution, up to 32M, in Mass Spec
The O’Connor group has developed a computation which simultaneously doubles the resolution, sensitivity and mass accuracy of Fourier Transform Mass Spectrometry at no extra cost.
Probing dispersions of graphene-like molecules
Costantini and collaborators report in JACS on dispersions of HBC, an analogue to small graphene flakes.