Search

Controlled embankment breaches could reduce flood risk for the Ganges–Brahmaputra tidal delta plain as sea level rises.

The radiative forcing due to aerosol-cloud interactions constitutes one of the largest uncertainties of anthropogenic radiative forcing. Direct satellite measurements of the relevant aerosol properties reveal that the resulting cooling from anthropogenic aerosols is much stronger than previously thought.

An ultracold gas of atoms can be used as the tip in a new type of scanning probe microscope.

Researchers have fired ultracold-atom Bose–Einstein condensates towards the submicrometre-featured potentials formed by the optical near-fields of surface plasmons. The strength and structural dependence of the optical near-fields were determined from the reflection of cold atoms. It is hoped that the work paves the way towards plasmonic guiding and the manipulation of cold atoms.

Remote sensing often detects higher vegetation greenness for croplands than for forests, despite forests having a greater leaf area. This study shows that this is an artefact of shadows caused by forest structures and explores how to correct for this when interpreting global vegetation change data.

Networks of atom–cavity systems necessarily require that single atoms sit near dielectric interfaces. Real-time monitoring of caesium atoms just 100 nm from the surface of a micro-toroid resonator now demonstrates that the Casimir effect plays an important role in these systems.

The structures of three intermediate states of photosystem II, which is crucial for photosynthesis, have been solved at room temperature, shedding new light on this process.

Pol ι forms Hoogsteen base pairs with the incoming nucleotide. Here, the authors use time-lapse X-ray crystallography to show that Hoogsten base pairing is maintained within the pol ι active site throughout the nucleotide incorporation reaction.

Protein motion is essential for biological processes like enzyme function. Here the authors report the time-resolved protein structures captured during catalysis of copper amine oxidase using mix-and-inject serial femtosecond X-ray crystallography.

Chen et al. demonstrate the use of multi-angular polarimetric remote sensing to pinpoint global aerosol absorption and direct radiative forcing.

The fundamental interactions between a rubidium atom and a carbon nanotube can be probed by inserting the nanotube into an ultracold cloud of atoms.

Spitrobot is a protein crystal plunging system that enables reaction quenching through cryo-trapping with millisecond time resolution. Here, the authors present Spitrobot 2 as an integrated benchtop device with improved net sample preparation time and cryo-trapping delay time, increasing the number of target systems that can be studied using cryo-trapping time-resolved crystallography.

This Review extends fluctuational electrodynamics, introduced originally to deal with radiation due to thermal fluctuations, to provide a unified quantitative theoretical framework that accounts for light emission processes in solids.

The UbiD-UbiX decarboxylase system is required for the biosynthesis of quinone cofactors. Here, the authors combine structural and biochemical analyses to elucidate the UbiX reaction mechanism, showing that it resembles the mode of action of class I terpene cyclases.

Controlling p-wave interactions between fermions would enable studies of interesting quantum phenomena. Towards this end, Juliá-Díaz et al. propose a combination of strongly confined nanoplasmonic traps and laser-induced gauge fields that could produce the necessary coupling of atomic states.

The authors introduce the spitrobot, a crystal plunger, enabling cryo-trapping with millisecond time-resolution via the liquid application method (LAMA). Ligand binding and reaction intermediates are demonstrated in three different enzymes.

Rev1 is a specialized translesion synthesis DNA polymerase involved in the bypass DNA damage during DNA replication. Here, the authors determine the structural basis for preferential incorporation of dCTP by Rev1 during bypass of DNA damage.

Class-A β-lactamases can render antibiotics ineffective through hydrolysis, but the associated enzyme-antibiotic complexes remain largely underexplored at room temperatures. Here, the authors use RT serial synchrotron crystallography to report acyl-enzyme intermediates of the catalytically impaired β-lactamase CTX-M-14 mutant (E166A) from Klebsiella pneumoniae, and show that different isoxazolyl-penicillins adopt different conformations at room temperature.

Here, the authors present a method that enables time-resolved serial protein crystallography over a wide temperature range (10–70 °C). This 5D crystallography approach can be implemented to illuminate protein function at physiologically relevant conditions.

Structure-based drug discovery of cereblon (CRBN)-recruiting protein degraders has been to date challenging due to limitations with current constructs for recombinant protein expression. In this work, the authors design and validate a truncated CRBN construct, CRBNmidi, that enables crystallization and biophysical characterization of CRBN-binding ligands and degraders.

Plant recolonization after rewetting in a fen results in an intermediate phase with strongly increased net greenhouse gas fluxes due to wave-like changes in methane emissions, indicating underestimation of carbon emissions in rewetted fens, based on 5 years of automatic chamber measurements.

Urban water management often prioritizes engineering efficiency over local ecological and social contexts. Landscape architects can leverage high-resolution modelling and vernacular intelligence to design resilient, culturally embedded solutions.

p53 is an important tumor suppressor protein which is regulated by the E3 ubiquitin ligase MDM2. Here the authors reveal that DNA damage-induced Ser429 phosphorylation of MDM2 serve to boost the activity of MDM2 homodimer by stabilizing the active E2–ubiquitin complex and promote its self-destruction to enable rapid p53 stabilization.

Vacuum fluctuations in the vicinity of nanophotonic structures can lead to the conversion of a free electron into a polariton and a high-energy photon, whose frequency can be controlled by the electromagnetic properties of the nanostructure.

Some bacterial pathogens release NADase enzymes into the host cell that deplete the host’s NAD⁺ pool, thereby causing rapid cell death. Here, Strømland et al. identify NADases on the surface of fungal spores, and show that the enzymes display unique biochemical and structural properties.

Coupling the fluorescence of cold atoms to plasmons propagating on a gold surface offers a means of controlling the radiation from optical emitters without the need for a cavity.

A rapid sample mixing approach enables time-resolved structural studies of enzymatic reactions using serial synchrotron crystallography.

Here, the reaction of the suicide inhibitor sulbactam with the M. tuberculosis β-lactamase (BlaC) is investigated with time-resolved crystallography. Singular Value Decomposition is implemented to extract kinetic information despite changes in unit cell parameters during the time-course of the reaction.

Halogenase enzymes are of interest as halogenating tools for organic synthesis. Here the authors show that the bacterial FAD-dependent phenolic halogenase PltM chlorinates, brominates and iodinates a variety of substrates and reveal the structural basis for its substrate versatility and provide insights into the FAD recycling mechanism of PltM.

The use of photonic crystals to trap atoms on a chip offers unique possibilities for atom–light interactions. Advancing towards this goal, the authors realize photonic crystal waveguides where the electronic transition frequencies of localized caesium atoms are aligned with the band edges of the waveguides.

Using serial femtosecond X-ray cystallography, we provide structural insights into the final reaction step of Kok’s photosynthetic water oxidation cycle, specifically the S₃→[S₄]→S₀ transition where O₂ is formed.

We report direct measurement of repulsive van der Waals forces on suspended graphene using atomic force microscopy. The strong repulsive forces substantially lower the wettability of suspended graphene.

Boronate-based ß-lactamase inhibitors play an important role in treating multidrug-resistant bacteria infection, however, the molecular mechanism of inhibition remains unclear. Here, the authors use time-resolved serial crystallography to investigate the binding process by using boric acid as a model against β-lactamase CTX-M-14, revealing the binding to the active site serine within 80–100 ms, a subsequent 1,2-diol boric ester formation with glycerol within 100–150 ms, as well as the displacement of the sulfate anion in the active site.

Efflux transporters of the RND family confer resistance to multiple antibiotics in Gram-negative bacteria. Here, the authors identify pyridylpiperazine-based compounds that potentiate antibiotic activity in E. coli through allosteric inhibition of its primary RND transporter.

Alkaline ceramidases (ACERs) are a class of poorly understood transmembrane enzymes controlling the homeostasis of ceramides. Here authors solve the Xray structure of human ACER3 and uncover a Ca2+ binding site providing an explanation for the known regulatory role of Ca2+ on ACER3 activity.

A thermal Casimir force—an attraction between two metal surfaces caused by thermal, rather than quantum, fluctuations in the electromagnetic field—has now been identified experimentally between a flat and a spherical gold plate.

A data-collection strategy using a fixed-target crystallography chip allows time-resolved serial synchrotron crystallography experiments to determine enzyme intermediate structures with time resolutions of milliseconds to seconds.

The oxygen-evolving complex in Photosystem II (PSII) catalyzes the light-driven oxidation of water to oxygen and it is still under debate how the water reaches the active site. Here, the authors analyse time-resolved XFEL-based crystal structures of PSII that were determined at room temperature and report the structures of the waters in the putative channels surrounding the active site at various time-points during the reaction cycle and conclude that the O1 channel is the likely water intake pathway and the Cl1 channel the likely proton release pathway.

Rydberg atoms are appealing for sensing, atomic and quantum information studies, if they can be suitably integrated with optical devices. Towards this end, Epple et al. show that caesium-filled kagome-lattice hollow-core photonic crystal fibres provide a platform for fibre-based spectroscopy of Rydberg states.

Here the authors discover that furanodienone (FDN), a small molecule derived from ginger, exhibits PXR agonist activity selective for the intestine and show that when FDN is administered orally in pharmacological doses ameliorates induced colitis in male mice.