UPCOMING EVENTS
LATEST NEWS
A new Bruker 600 MHz NMR spectrometer has arrived!
For those who have not seen the installation of such an instrument before, it is rather an interesting process. You can take a look at some of the installation moments in the pictures bellow.
More pictures will be added in the following days, so stay tuned ;)
11. 4. 2019
A new paper in Nucleic Acids Research presents high-resolution structure of two-quartet kit* G-quadruplex originating from a promoter region of c-KIT proto-oncogene. kit* might have an important role in regulation of c-KIT transcription, since it contains consensus sites for transcription factors and folds into G-quadruplex much faster compared to neighboring G-rich regions.
For more information read the original paper: here
14. 3. 2019
Our latest paper published in Angew. Chem. presents thermodynamics data on AGCGA-quadruplexes that differentiate this structural family from the other structures of DNA. It has been reported recently that G-rich DNA oligonucleotides may adopt besides the well-known G-quadruplexes another type of noncanonical structures called AGCGA-quadruplexes. This unique DNA fold is stabilized by hydrophobic desolvation which is similar to the double-stranded B-type DNA, but in contrast to G-quadruplexes, also by specific binding of water molecules. Compared to B-DNA, VK2 folding is enthalpically less favorable due to poorer base-stacking interactions resulting in substantial conformational flexibility. This entropicaly favorable conformational flexibility stabilizes the AGCGA-quadruplexes. In conclusion, we show that AGCGA-quadruplexes have a distinguishing thermodynamic fingerprint and that the corresponding driving forces enabling their folding are consistent with the observed structural features.
25. 2. 2019
Congratulations to Jasna for winning the outstanding award, Maks Samec prize for doctoral thesis in the field of Biochemistry, and recognition of her doctoral thesis obtained from the Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology, University of Ljubljana.
