Scientists from Russia, UK, Spain, Brazil, Japan, and Austria discovered the essential set of enzymes that allows glowing fungi to emit light. The bioluminescent system includes a brand- new luciferase and three enzymes that enable biosynthesis of fungal luciferin from a widespread metabolite – caffeic acid – as well as its recycling. The genes encoding this “caffeic acid cycle” make up a unique molecular toolkit that allows to turn any higher organism into a glowing one. The work was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Professor Kurt Wüthrich, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 2002, visited Shemyakin–Ovchinnikov Institute of bioorganic chemistry RAS and took part in the workshop of the Structural biology department of the Institute (headed by Prof. Alexander Arseniev).

The researchers from Laboratory of molecular bases of embryogenesis recently hypothesised that the decrease of limb regeneration capacity in amniotes (reptiles, birds and mammals) could be caused by elimination in evolution of genes, encoding for important regulators of specific wound epithelium and blastema organization, which are used by excellent regenerating anamniotes (fish and amphibia). Using two anamniotic model organisms Danio rerio adult fishes and Xenopus laevis tadpoles the authors have shown the essential role of Ras-dva small GTPases in regulation of these processes, meanwhile their genes are eliminated in a stepwise manner during evolution till total absence in placental mammals. The obtained results support the hypothesis. The investigation is published in Scientific reports.

Researchers from the Biophotonics lab of IBCH RAS (Anastasia Mamontova, Konstantin Lukyanov and Alexey Bogdanov) designed a new green fluorescent protein that combines high fluorescence brightness and short fluorescence lifetime. They used a semi-rational protein evolution approach. Their collaborators from Bach Institute of Biochemistry and Semenov Institute of Physical Chemistry helped with the time-resolved fluorescence analysis (FLIM) that allowed characterizing the physical properties of this perspective probe. Research has recently been published in the Scientific Reports.

Scientists from the Laboratory of biocatalysis developed a new microfluidics-based ultrahigh-throughput technology for the “deep functional profiling” of microbial communities and used it to search for bacteria producing new antibiotics in the microbiome of the Siberian bear's oral cavity. This methodology allowed them not only to find the antibiotic amicoumacin, elucidating the mechanisms of its biosynthesis and self-resistance, but also to investigate the spectrum of its activity at the level of various bacterial communities. The results published in PNAS will find numerous applications in the field of antibiotic discovery and will help to solve the problem of antibiotic resistance.

Venoms of spiders and wasps contain acylpolyamines that act as high-affinity blockers of ionotropic receptors for glutamate, the main excitatory neurotransmitter in the human central nervous system (CNS). The first representative of acylpolyamines, argiopin from the venom of the orb-weaver spider Argiope lobata, was discovered in 1986 by Eugene Grishin’s team at IBCh RAS. Here, an international team of scientists, including a researcher from IBCh RAS, has used cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) to determine the first atomic structure of an argiopin-glutamate receptor complex. This structure will help to design new drugs for treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. The study is published in Neuron.

Russian scientists together with colleagues from Sweden and the USA developed red fluorescent tags that are safe for nanoscopy in living cells. This work was funded by a grant from the Russian Science Foundation (RSF), and the results are published in Nature Methods journal.

One of the directions of the Molecular Technologies Laboratory is the development of new tools for bioimaging and optogenetics. Yulia Ermakova, Vsevolod Belousov and other lab members, in an article in Chemical Communications, describe a new member of SypHer family of genetically encoded pH indicators, SypHer3s.

Scientists from IBCh RAS together with foreign colleagues discovered that a toxin from the venom of the spider Heriaeus melloteei may serve as a hit in drug discovery for hypokalemic periodic paralysis type 2. The disease is caused by mutations in the gene encoding voltage-gated sodium channels NaV1.4, characteristic of skeletal muscles. As a result of the mutations, these channels conduct aberrant currents, the muscles are unable to respond to the signals of the nervous system, and weakness develops followed by paralysis. Until now, there is no reliable medication for all cases of this disease. The results of the work are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (PNAS).