Researchers at Linköping University in Sweden are developing a promising new method to selectively convert carbon dioxide and water to various types of fuel. Driving this reaction is solar energy. The recent study, published in ACS Nano, combines the material graphene and the semiconductor cubic silicon carbide in a process which essentially mimics photosynthesis in plants.
Research is heating up to achieve greater fundamental understanding of the mechanism of ferroelectricity in hafnia-based materials, a crucial step in the development of next generation devices. New findings from the University of Groningen (RUG) in the journal Science define the key role of oxygen for greater miniaturization potential and structural stability beyond that of standard ferroelectric materials used in low-power memories. Electron microscopy and MAX IV’s NanoMAX beamline have illuminated the nature of polarization in thin films of hafnium zirconium oxide for ferroelectronics.
Fungal enzymes play an important role in the breakdown of plant cell walls during plant degradation. An international collaboration of researchers explored the auxiliary activities 7 (AA7) enzyme family, characterizing four fungal enzymes and uncovering a novel class of flavo-enzymes, exemplified by oligosaccharide dehydrogenase. The enzymes fuel the activity of lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs) in the challenging process of crystalline cellulose degradation. The study, published in Nature Communications, offers promise for tuning the efficiency of enzymatic breakdown processes of biomass feedstocks used in energy and biomaterial production.
An international collaboration between the UCL School of Pharmacy, the Lund Protein Production Platform (LP3) and ESS, through its DEMAX platform, have performed biophysical and structural studies of three non-structural proteins from the novel coronavirus, SARS CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19. In the spring of 2020, they managed to solve and started to analyse one of these proteins, Nsp10, by using the BioMAX beamline at MAX IV Laboratory. Early October published their results in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
An international collaboration of scientists identified four fragments that interact with the nsp10 protein of the SARS-CoV-2 virus using the FragMAX platform and BioMAX beamline. The fragments could be used to develop inhibitors that supplant key enzymes activated by the protein—an application which holds potential to block the viral replication process.