One strategy to combat antimicrobial resistance is the discovery of new classes of antibiotics. Most antibiotics will at some point interact with the bacterial membrane to either interfere with its integrity or to cross it. Reliable and efficient tools for determining the dissociation constant for membrane binding (K_D) and the partitioning coefficient between the aqueous- and membrane ...

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the leading concerns in medical care. Here we study the mechanism of action of an antimicrobial cationic tripeptide, AMC-109, by combining high speed-atomic force microscopy, molecular dynamics, fluorescence assays, and lipidomic analysis. We show that AMC-109 activity on negatively charged membranes derived from Staphylococcus aureus consists of two crucial steps. ...

<p>Oil-based plastic production now exceeds 330 Mt annually1 and poses a major environmental problem. Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) is a group of bioplastic polyesters that can replace oil-based plastics in many applications, but economic costs are higher and industrial-scale production still limited. PHA is produced naturally by diverse groups of bacteria and stored intracellularly as hydrophobic ...

Cold-adapted enzymes are characterized both by a higher catalytic activity at low temperatures and by having their temperature optimum down-shifted, compared to mesophilic orthologs. In several cases, the optimum does not coincide with the onset of protein melting but reflects some other type of inactivation. In the psychrophilic α-amylase from an Antarctic bacterium, the inactivation is thought to ...

DFT calculations with the well-tested OLYP and B3LYP* exchange-correlation functionals (along with D3 dispersion corrections and all-electron ZORA STO-TZ2P basis sets) and careful use of group theory have led to significant insights into the question of metal- versus ligand-centered redox in Co and Ni B,C-tetradehydrocorrin complexes. For the cationic complexes, both metals occur in their low-spin ...

The interaction of three free-base meso-tris(p-X-phenyl)corroles H3[TpXPC] (X = H, CH3, OCH3) with Re2(CO)10 at 235 °C in the presence of K2CO3 in o-dichlorobenzene has led to putative rhenium biscorrole sandwich compounds with the formula ReH[TpXPC]2. Density functional theory calculations and Re L3-edge extended X-ray absorption fine structure measurements suggest a seven-coordinate metal center, ...

Poly(ethylene terephthalate) polyester represents the most common class of thermoplastic polymers widely used in the textile, bottling, and packaging industries. Terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol, both of petrochemical origin, are polymerized to yield the polyester. However, an earlier report suggests that polymerization of methoxyterephthalic acid with ethylene glycol provides a methoxy-polyester ...

Lipids have been implicated in Parkinson's Disease (PD). We therefore studied the lipid profile of the neuroblastoma SH-SY5Y cell line, which is used extensively in PD research and compared it to that of the A431 epithelial cancer cell line. We have isolated whole cell extracts (WC) and plasma membrane (PM) fractions of both cell lines. The isolates were analyzed with 31P NMR. We observed a significant ...

Deposition of large volumes of mine tailings takes place in several Norwegian fjords, but the impacts on marine ecosystems have received relatively little scientific attention. At a 40 + − year old tailing deposition area for a copper mine in the Arctic fjord Repparfjorden, we investigated both short-term colonization of mine tailingscontaminated sediments through a field experiment, and the present ...

Cyclic peptides show a wide range of biological activities, among others as antibacterial agents. These peptides are often large and flexible with multiple chiral centers. The determination of the stereochemistry of molecules with multiple chiral centers is a challenging and important task in drug development. Chiroptical spectroscopies such as vibrational circular dichroism (VCD) can ...