Imaging in liquid with unprecedented clarity
Researchers at the Rosalind Franklin Institute have made a significant breakthrough by imaging bacteria in liquid with unprecedented clarity. Published in the journal Small, this advancement in Liquid Phase Electron Microscopy (LPEM) allows scientists to study biological molecules in their natural…
Exploration of unwanted immune response to penicillin lays groundwork for better drug design
Around 6% of people in the UK are allergic to penicillin according to their medical records – the most commonly reported drug allergy. And although research suggests the majority of those patients could, in practice, tolerate the drug, penicillin allergy…
Llama derived nanobodies neutralising new strains of coronavirus.
Specific nanobodies have been isolated that can neutralise Omicron strains of Covid-19. This research, conducted by scientists at the Rosalind Franklin Institute and the Universities of Oxford, Liverpool and Zurich, has been published in Open Biology. The landscape of SARS-CoV-2 variants…
First specific PET scan for TB could enable more effective treatment
A more accurate way to scan for tuberculosis (TB) has been developed by UK and US researchers, using positron emission tomography (PET). The team, from the Rosalind Franklin Institute, the Universities of Oxford and Pittsburgh and the National Institutes of…
A new greener chemical method for transforming native sugars
A team of scientists from the Rosalind Franklin Institute and National University of Singapore have developed a more efficient and sustainable chemistry for connecting sugars to diverse partner molecules in a way that mimics nature. Complex sugars perform a variety…
Key Biosynthesis Enzyme Structurally Resolved
Franklin researchers, in collaboration with the University of Oxford, Keele University and Queensland University of Technology have succeeded in characterising the bifunctional enzyme NDST1. In doing so, they have closed a knowledge gap: providing the final experimentally resolved structure for…
All-in-One Platform for biomolecule analysis
Researchers from the Rosalind Franklin Institute, Fasmatech and Thermo Fisher Scientific have developed, constructed and characterised a one-of-a-kind bespoke mass spectrometer that is capable of comprehensive characterisation of most types of biomolecules. The researchers have initially started with peptides and…
Developments in cryo-electron ptychography
Researchers at the Rosalind Franklin Institute working alongside colleagues at Nanjing University, University of Warwick, Diamond Light Source and University of Oxford are adapting an electron microscopy technique for life sciences which was originally developed for the materials science. Using…
‘Native’ radical creation technique opens new doors in protein editing
In the human body, proteins in our cells are often modified after production. A process called glycosylation helps fine-tune our immune systems, while another called ubiquitination helps remove damaged or unwanted proteins from the cell. These natural processes, however, only…
J105 at the Franklin
The J105 SIMS (J105) is a special 3D imaging Time of flight Secondary ion mass spectrometer (ToF SIMS) instrument manufactured by Ionoptika. SIMS is a technique used to look at the composition of surfaces by hitting the specimen with a focused…