Browsing by Author "Liang, Mengning"

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    Drop-on-demand sample delivery for studying biocatalysts in action at X-ray free-electron lasers
    (Nature Publishing Group, 2017) Fuller, Franklin D.; Gul, Sheraz; Chatterjee, Ruchira; Burgie, E.Sethe; Young, Iris D.; Lebrette, Hugo; Srinivas, Vivek; Brewster, Aaron S.; Michels-Clark, Tara; Clinger, Jonathan A.; Andi, Babak; Ibrahim, Mohamed; Pastor, Ernest; de Lichtenberg, Casper; Hussein, Rana; Pollock, Christopher J.; Zhang, Miao; Stan, Claudiu A.; Kroll, Thomas; Fransson, Thomas; Weninger, Clemens; Kubin, Markus; Aller, Pierre; Lassalle, Louise; Bräuer, Philipp; Miller, Mitchell D.; Amin, Muhamed; Koroidov, Sergey; Roessler, Christian G.; Allaire, Marc; Sierra, Raymond G.; Docker, Peter T.; Glownia, James M.; Nelson, Silke; Koglin, Jason E.; Zhu, Diling; Chollet, Matthieu; Song, Sanghoon; Lemke, Henrik; Liang, Mengning; Sokaras, Dimosthenis; Alonso-Mori, Roberto; Zouni, Athina; Messinger, Johannes; Bergmann, Uwe; Boal, Amie K.; Bollinger, J.Martin Jr.; Krebs, Carsten; Högbom, Martin; Phillips, George N.Jr.; Vierstra,, Richard D.; Sauter, Nicholas K.; Orville, Allen M.; Kern, Jan; Yachandra, Vittal K.; Yano, Junko
    X-ray crystallography at X-ray free-electron laser sources is a powerful method for studying macromolecules at biologically relevant temperatures. Moreover, when combined with complementary techniques like X-ray emission spectroscopy, both global structures and chemical properties of metalloenzymes can be obtained concurrently, providing insights into the interplay between the protein structure and dynamics and the chemistry at an active site. The implementation of such a multimodal approach can be compromised by conflicting requirements to optimize each individual method. In particular, the method used for sample delivery greatly affects the data quality. We present here a robust way of delivering controlled sample amounts on demand using acoustic droplet ejection coupled with a conveyor belt drive that is optimized for crystallography and spectroscopy measurements of photochemical and chemical reactions over a wide range of time scales. Studies with photosystem II, the phytochrome photoreceptor, and ribonucleotide reductase R2 illustrate the power and versatility of this method.
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    Enzyme intermediates captured “on the fly” by mix-and-inject serial crystallography
    (Springer Nature, 2018) Olmos, Jose Luis Jr.; Pandey, Suraj; Martin-Garcia, Jose M.; Calvey, George; Katz, Andrea; Knoska, Juraj; Kupitz, Christopher; Hunter, Mark S.; Liang, Mengning; Oberthuer, Dominik; Yefanov, Oleksandr; Wiedorn, Max; Heyman, Michael; Holl, Mark; Pande, Kanupriya; Barty, Anton; Miller, Mitchell D.; Stern, Stephan; Roy-Chowdhury, Shatabdi; Coe, Jesse; Nagaratnam, Nirupa; Zook, James; Verburgt, Jacob; Norwood, Tyler; Poudyal, Ishwor; Xu, David; Koglin, Jason E.; Seaberg, Matthew H.; Zhao, Yun; Bajt, Saša; Grant, Thomas; Mariani, Valerio; Nelson, Garrett; Subramanian, Ganesh; Bae, Euiyoung; Fromme, Raimund; Fung, Russell; Schwander, Peter; Frank, Matthias; White, Thomas A.; Weierstall, Uwe; Zatsepin, Nadia; Spence, John; Fromme, Petra; Chapman, Henry N.; Pollack, Lois; Tremblay, Lee; Ourmazd, Abbas; Phillips, George N.Jr.; Schmidt, Marius
    BACKGROUND: Ever since the first atomic structure of an enzyme was solved, the discovery of the mechanism and dynamics of reactions catalyzed by biomolecules has been the key goal for the understanding of the molecular processes that drive life on earth. Despite a large number of successful methods for trapping reaction intermediates, the direct observation of an ongoing reaction has been possible only in rare and exceptional cases. RESULTS: Here, we demonstrate a general method for capturing enzyme catalysis "in action" by mix-and-inject serial crystallography (MISC). Specifically, we follow the catalytic reaction of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis β-lactamase with the third-generation antibiotic ceftriaxone by time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography. The results reveal, in near atomic detail, antibiotic cleavage and inactivation from 30 ms to 2 s. CONCLUSIONS: MISC is a versatile and generally applicable method to investigate reactions of biological macromolecules, some of which are of immense biological significance and might be, in addition, important targets for structure-based drug design. With megahertz X-ray pulse rates expected at the Linac Coherent Light Source II and the European X-ray free-electron laser, multiple, finely spaced time delays can be collected rapidly, allowing a comprehensive description of biomolecular reactions in terms of structure and kinetics from the same set of X-ray data.