In the recent years, plant extract became more and more used, worldwide in allopathic treatment of different types of disease associated symptoms. Several studies showed that plant extracts containing a certain alkaloid, known as berberine, has different beneficial effects such as antitumoral effect (Andreicuț et all, 2019; Milata et all, 2019). Other effect of these berberine based plant...
Hydrogel films made from responsive polymers are able to switch between a swollen (extended polymer chains) and a contracted film state (coiled polymer chains) in response to slight changes in their surroundings. In recent studies, we demonstrated the versatility of a multi-responsive diblock copolymer, containing a zwitterionic poly(sulfobetaine) and a nonionic poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide)...
The substrates of enzymes are often insoluble in water. Protein molecules, however, are usually hydrophilic. Nature overcomes this problem by compartmentalization of the cytoplasm and by generating huge interfaces between polar and apolar regions inside the different relevant organelles. For biotechnological applications an approach mimicking this compartment formation has already been...
This contribution introduces the newly established sample environment at the small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) diffractometer KWS-2 at the neutron source Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (MLZ, Garching, Germany): the in-situ size exclusion chromatography (SEC) directly followed by SANS measurements, the SEC-SANS setup. The motivation is the growing demand from users interested in bio-molecular samples...
The neutron backscattering spectrometer SPHERES (SPectrometer for High Energy RESolution) at MLZ is a third generation backscattering spectrometer with focusing optics and phase-space transform (PST) chopper. It covers a dynamic range of ± 31μeV with a high resolution of about 0.66μeV and a good signal-to-noise ratio. The instrument performance has been improved over the recent years by...
Cellulose is the predominant polymer of the biosphere. An understanding of the interaction of cellulose surfaces with different kinds of adsorbed molecules is key to many fundamental questions in biological, environmental and materials sciences. Unlike other biopolymers, the synthases for cellulose polymerize the monomer (glucose) directly into the nanostructure, unitary crystallites called...
The method of small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) is highly versatile. Using deuteration many hydrogen containing materials can be highlighted against the residual matrix. This is also highly beneficial for biomaterials. Either synthetic polymers or deuterium grown proteins and lipids from bacteria are embedded in highly complex biology mimicking environments such that their specific...
The new customized SAXS/WAXS instrument from XENOCS have be installed in the JCNS SAXS-Lab1 from the end of 2021. As a young member of our small angle scattering instrument by using X-ray as beam, the new instrument is equipped with a high flux metal-jet source and a moveable Eiger 2R4M SAXS detector. With additional 4-axis motorized WAXS detector and Bonse-Hart USAXS the scattering vector q...
Mucins are an important group of biomacromolecules that function as soft wet barriers to chemical transport and shear stress in the physiological milieu [1]. They are characterized by a charged and highly glycosylated linked peptide backbone and a propensity to form cross-links by a range of mechanisms. The fundamental structural unit is a bottle-brush-like morphology organized into higher...
The self-assembly of amphiphilic copolymers with alternating hydrophobic and hydrophilic blocks has garnered much attention in recent years due to the wide range of nanostructures they can form, including micelles, vesicles, and gels. In this particular study, we focus on investigating the phase behavior of in-house synthesized Alternating Amphiphilic Copolymers (CnEGm) [1] in water using...
Glycolipids are known to stabilize biomembrane multilayers through preferential sugar-sugar interactions that act as weak transient membrane crosslinkers [1, 2]. We use small-angle and inelastic neutron scattering on oligolamellar phospholipid vesicles containing defined glycolipid fractions in order to elucidate the influence of glycolipids on membrane mechanics and dynamics.
Small-angle...
In this contribution we discuss the use of a circulating liquid sample pumped by a peristaltic pump through the cuvettes of different scattering or absorption techniques in order to follow processes in biomaterials formation in time. The tested techniques are UV-Visible spectroscopy, Circular Dichroism, infrared spectroscopy or static light scattering, further more we used small angle x-ray or...
Amyloid β42 (Aβ42) is predominantly found in the form of plaques in the brain tissues and stems the cognitive dysfunctionality in Alzheimer’s. Aβ depending upon aggregation states Aβ42-monomer (M)/β-sheets/oligomer (O)/fibril (F), and amino acid lengths affect the model membrane mimetic systems [1-4]. The plasma membrane is the first biological structure encountered by Aβ42 and can play a...
