Institute of
bioorganic chemistry

A collaboration of scientists from the Shemyakin-Ovchinnikov Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences have developed a breakthrough technology to resolve a key problem that has prevented the introduction of novel drugs into clinical practice for decades. The new solution prolongs blood circulation for virtually any nanomedicine, boosting its therapeutic efficiency. The study was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering and featured in the journal’s News & Views section. Learn more

Kinase-mediated phosphorylation represents one of the general strategies for the emergence of antibiotic resistance. Scientists from the Laboratory of biocatalysis reported a unique bioscavenging kinase AmiN, member of a new subfamily of AmiN-like kinases, isolated from the Siberian bear microbiome, inactivates antibiotic amicoumacin by phosphorylation. The nanomolar substrate affinity defines AmiN as a phosphotransferase with a unique catalytic efficiency proximal to the diffusion limit. Crystallographic analysis and multiscale simulations revealed a catalytically perfect mechanism providing phosphorylation exclusively in the case of a closed active site that counteracts substrate promiscuity. AmiN kinase is a member of the previously unknown subfamily representing the first evidence of a specialized phosphotransferase bioscavenger. The work is published in Science Advances.

Wood formation is an extremely complex process, controlled by more than 40,000 genes.At the cellular level, wood is nothing but lignified cell walls that constructed from three main structural biopolymers - cellulose, hemicellulose and lignins. The main component of hemicellulose is xyloglucans, which form short cross-links between long cellulose filaments. The more stitches, the lower the elasticity of the cell wall. Scientists from the Group of Forest Biotechnology together with russian and foreign colleages suggested that partial, rather than excessive, hydrolysis of xyloglucans may affect the elasticity of the cell wall, and indirectly the growth rate of the tree. In transgenic models of aspen, they have shown that superexpression of recombinant xyloglucanase from the fungus P.canescens leads not only to hydrolysis of cell wall xyloglucans, but also is accompanied by a complex of changes in the phenotype: the content of cellulose in wood is increased, the carbohydrate composition of wood are changed, as a result, the wood began to decompose more slowly. The work is published in BMC Plant Biology. Learn more

Scientists from the Department of Chemical Biology of Glycans and Lipids, the Department of structural biology and the Department of Biomaterials and Bionanotechnology IBCh RAS in collaboration with Russian and foreign colleges published a paper in ChemistryOpen on the study of conjugate of a biotin with DOPE (dioleoylphosphatidyl ethanolamine) through a nontrivial spacer, CMG (made from oligoglycine, some of glycines are carboxymethylated). biot-CMG-DOPE remarkably integrates into living cells, and in seconds (by simple contact) it covers almost any surface - and this has become a universal way of biotinylation. The work sheds light on the supramolecular organization of biot-CMG-DOPE molecule as part of the cell membrane and the mechanism of its interaction with streptavidin. Learn more

Scientists from the Laboratory of bioengineering of neuromodulators and neuroreceptors, the Laboratory of structural biology of ion channels and the Laboratory of neuroreceptors and neuroregulators Shemyakin-Ovchnnikov Institute together with colleagues from the Faculty of biology of Moscow State University and other russian scientific institutes, found that the intranasal administration of the water-soluble analogue of the human neuromodulator Lynx1, which is a GPI-tethered regulatory protein colocalized with nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) in the brain regions responsible for learning and memory can prevent cognitive impairment associated with dysfunction of the α7 type nicotinic acetylcholine receptor. The work is published in the Journal of Neurochemistry under support of Russian Science Foundation. Learn more