Junchen's work on the first peptide beacon for DNA sensing is in press in JACS
Junchen's work on the first peptide beacon for DNA sensing is in press in JACSMolecular beacons are widely used for sensing nucleic acids, however, so far nearly all beacons are based on nucleic acids are analogues thereof themselves. Junchen now designed the first peptide beacon for DNA sensing. A pyrene functionalized cationic oligopeptide efficiently binds to ds-DNA as he could show by different spectrophotochemical studies. Upon binding the conformation of the peptide changes from a folded to an extended form which leads to a distinct change in the fluorescence properties. As the peptide is furthermore easily taken up by cells it can also be used for imaging of nucleic acids within cells.
Hannes Kuchelmeister finishes his dissertation.
On thursday, October 27th, Hannes successfully passed his PhD defense and is therefore now Dr. Kucehlmeister. Congratulations! He also received a Post-Doc scholarship from the Humboldt foundation and will be heading for Standford, CA in January.
Tropical Thunder. A new class of antimalaria agents was discovered by Sebastian Langolf
N-Protected guanidinofurans and -pyrroles proved to be efficient cystein protease inhibitors and are active against pathogens such as plasmodium falciparum or trypanosoma brucei brucei, the causative agents for the diseases malaria and nagana. This new compound class was synthesized and investigated by Sebastian Langolf during his PhD work and is described in a fullpaper just published (ChemMedChem 2011, 6, 1581-1586)
Karsten Klemm finishes his dissertation.
On monday, July 18th, Karsten successfully passed his PhD defense and is therefore now Dr. Klemm. Congratulations. Part of his dissertation work on cationic artifical receptors for nucleotide and polynucleotide binding is currently under revision as a full paper in Chemistry A European Journal and will hopefully appear in print soon.
Two anions form stable dimer! Caros finding was accepted for publication in ChemCommun
During her PhD work, Caro observed that an imidopyrrolecarboxylate unexpectedly formed stable dimers in CHCl3/DMSO (1:1) despite the fact that two anions have to interact.
The dimer is more stable than an analogous neutral amidopyrrole carboxylic acid dimer underlining the importance of charged H-bonds compared to neutral ones. The work is currently in press in ChemCommun (DOI:10.1039/C1CC13446A).
Dissertation Carolin Rether
Caro sucessfully defends her dissertation thesis becoming the first woman to graduate form our working group. Congratulations! Dr. Rether is working for a pharmaceutical company now.
Be prepared! AK Schmuck practices fire fighting.
Two papers from our group just got accepted for publication in JACS (Junchen Wu) and ChemCommun (Fabian Rodler)
Junchen designed a fluorescent turn-on sensor for the detection of bacterial endotoxin. He designed a surface functionalized self-asssembled polydiacetylene liposome which upon binding to LPS in vitro exhibits a strong fluorescence increase allowing detection of LPS down to micromolar concentrations in water. This work will appear in JACS soon (DOI: 10.1021/ja204013u).
ChemCommun just accepted work from Fabian who could show that a Phe-Phe dipeptide extended guanidiniocarbonyl pyrrole carboxylate zwitterion form self-assembled dimers in DMSO with a high degree of stereoselective self-sorting. From the ten possible dimers only the four homochiral dimers are formed exclusievly and they differ by a factor of at least 1000 in their stability (the LL/LL dimer being more stable than the DL/DL dimer).
Gerd Gröger's PhD work accepted by JACS
Gerd's PhD work on switchable supramolecular polymers just got accepted by JACS (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ja200941a). This is the first example of a stable single stranded mainchain supramolecular polymer in polar solution in which self-assembly is based on two orthogonal binding interactions. Gerd could show that a small ditopic monomer with two different binding sites self-assembles in polar solution (DMSO, water) first into small cyclic oligomers and then into linear polymers. Self-assembly is based on the dimerization of our guanidiniocarbonyl pyrrole carboxylate zwitterion and binding of Fe(II) ions to a terpyridine ligand. Self-assembly was studied using dynamic light scattering (DLS), small-angle neutron scattering (SANS), electron microscopy (TEM, cryo-TEM) and viscosity measurements. Watch out for the full paper to appear soon in the printed version.
Prof. Schmuck was invited to a lecture tour in China
Following an invitation from Prof. Huang from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou (China) Prof. Schmuck visited five of China's top universities and presented the work ouf our group there. Besides Zhejiang University Prof. Schmuck also gave lectures at the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC), Fudan University (Shanghai), Nanjing University (Nanjing) and at Tsinghua University (Beijing). The pictures shows Prof. Schmuck together with Prof. Leyong Wang (to his right) and members of his group at Nanjing University.
Carolin Rether's work on the comparison of the binding propertis between acylguanidinium and aromatic guanidinium cations just appeared in EuJOC
Using nmr and ITC binding studies Carolin could show that an indole derived acyl guanidinium cation has significantly better binding properties than an analoguous aromatic guanidium cation. This allows for sequential binding of two substrates in a dicationic anion receptor containing both bidning sites. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of the iTC data revealed, that seemingly identical binding properties (as expressed in the association constant K) might be due to completely different thermodynamic reasons (binding enthalpy and entropy). This work just appeared in the European Journal of Organic Chemistry (EuJOC 2011, 149-1466).
Hannes work published
Hannes Kuchelmeister's work on tweezer receptors for nucleotide recognition in water just got accepted in Chemistry A European Journal. He observed not only very efficient binding but also an unprecedented selectivity, the less charged mononucleotides are preferred over di- or trinucleotides. This has never been observed for artificial nucleotide receptors so far. Look forward to the full article, which will appear soon.
Michael defends his PhD thesis
Michael Merschky sucessfully defended his PhD thesis on December 3rd. For his work on self-assembling dendrimers he obtained the best possible grade "summa cum laude". Congratulations! He is the first member of the AK Schmuck to graduate at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Michael is now working for the company Atotech in Berlin.
Hannes receives poster prize
During the 7th ERA chemistry Flash conference on bioinspired chemistry (October 24-27 in Santiago de Compostela, Spain) Hannes Kuchelmeister was awarded the poster prize for his presentation on artificial receptors for the recognition of nucleotides and nucleic acids in water.
Congratulations.
Fabians work on pH-switchable vesicles just got published in Angewandte
During his diploma thesis Fabian Rodler could show that a zwitterion derived from serine and our guanidiniocarbonyl pyrrole cation self-assembles into vesicles in DMSO solution. This vesicle formation can be completely switched on and off by adding acid or base to the solution. In collaboration with Jürgen Linders and Prof. Christian Mayer from physical chemistry Fabian used sophisticated DOSY NMR techniques to follow the formation and dectruction of the vesicles in solution.
The same finding was made by Tassilo using AFM. This is the first example for pH-switchable vesicles from a molecule which is not a classical amphiphile. Angew. Chem. 2010, in press; DOI: 10.1002/anie.201003405
Awarding at the 3rd international summer school
At the 3rd international summer school "supramolecular systems in chemistry and biology", which took place in Lviv (Ukraine) from September 6th to 10th, Ina Krebs won the price for the best poster presentation. She presented her PhD work on light emmitting supramolecular polymers. Ina received the price from Nobel laureate Jean-Marie Lehn, chairman of the summer school.
Ina Krebs and Jean-Marie Lehn
Awarding at the 1st jCS Ruhr Symposium
During the 1st jCS Ruhr Symposium in Bochum on September 9th Johannes Hofmann won the 2nd poster price given by a scientific committee. He presented his PhD work on artificial receptors for integrins.
Awarding ceremony at 1st jCS Ruhr Symposium
Science meets culture
The Schmuck group will discuss science, explore possible new fields of research and also do some sight seeing during an weekend trip to Würzburg.
During a weekend trip to Würzburg, not only a famous city for sightseeing but also the home of the Schmuck group from 2002 until 2008, the current members of the Schmuck group will take some time to discuss current projects going on in the group, do some brain storming about new possible research themes and talk about
interesting developments in chemistry. However, of course also some wine tasting and relaxed evenings enjoying local franconian food will be part of the activities.