The Biofisika Fundation has hired Camilla Calabrese as a Senior Researcher and she will continue in our group this year.

Congratulations!

Elena R. Alonso wins the Juan de La Cierva Postdoctoral Fellowship and will be in our Group until 2022.

Congratulations!

Rotational spectroscopy provides the most powerful means of identifying molecules of biological interest in the interstellar medium (ISM), but despite their importance, the detection of carbohydrates has remained rather elusive. Here, we present a comprehensive Fourier transform rotational spectroscopic study of elusive erythrulose, a sugar building block likely to be present in the ISM, employing a novel method of transferring the hygroscopic oily carbohydrate into the gas phase. The high sensitivity of the experiment allowed the rotational spectra of all monosubstituted isotopologue species of ¹³C-¹²C₃H₈O₄ to be recorded, which, together with quantum chemical calculations, enabled us to determine their equilibrium geometries (r_e^SE) with great precision. Searches employing the new experimental data for erythrulose have been undertaken in different ISM regions, so far including the cold areas Barnard 1, the pre-stellar core TMC-1, Sagittarius B2. Although no lines of erythrulose were found, this data will serve to enable future searches and possible detections in other ISM regions.

The paper has been accepted by The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.

Our paper “Conformational impact of aliphatic side chains in local anaesthetics: benzcaine, butamben and isobutamben” has been highlighted by Association ASEVA in July!

In the past decade, astrochemistry has witnessed an impressive increase in the number of detections of complex organic molecules. Some of these species are of prebiotic interest such as glycolaldehyde, the simplest sugar, or aminoacetonitrile, a possible precursor of glycine. Recently, we have reported the detection of two new nitrogen-bearing complex organics, glycolonitrile and Z-cyanomethanimine, known to be intermediate species in the formation process of ribonucleotides within theories of a primordial RNA-world for the origin of life. In this study, we present deep and high-sensitivity observations toward two of the most chemically rich sources in the galaxy: a giant molecular cloud in the center of the Milky Way (G + 0.693-0.027) and a proto-Sun (IRAS16293-2422 B). Our aim is to explore whether the key precursors considered to drive the primordial RNA-world chemistry are also found in space. Our high-sensitivity observations reveal that urea is present in G + 0.693-0.027 with an abundance of ∼5 · 10-11. This is the first detection of this prebiotic species outside a star-forming region. Urea remains undetected toward the proto-Sun IRAS16293-2422 B (upper limit to its abundance of ≤2×10^-11. Other precursors of the RNA-world chemical scheme such as glycolaldehyde or cyanamide are abundant in space, but key prebiotic species such as 2-amino-oxazole, glyceraldehyde, or dihydroxyacetone are not detected in either source. Future more sensitive observations targeting the brightest transitions of these species will be needed to disentangle whether these large prebiotic organics are certainly present in space.


The paper has been accepted by Astrobiology.

We studied the impact of the aliphatic side chain in the stability and conformational landscape of the local anaesthetics benzocaine, butamben and isobutamben, combining high resolution rotational spectroscopy in the microwave and millimetre regions and quantum-mechanical calculations. The study reveals the connections between the alkyl chain flexibility and molecular conformations.

The paper has been accepted by Chemical Communications.

Emilio J. cocinero gave a talk entitled “Unbiased Carbohydrates with atomic resolution: High-resolution spectroscopy” at the 3^rd Glycobasque Meeting.

Maider Parra gave a talk at the XII Conference of Young Researchers in Atomic and Molecular Physics (J2IFAM 2020) entitled “Conformational analysis of D-Lyxose: from gas to condensed phase studies“.

The XII Conference of Young Researchers in Atomic and Molecular Physics took place at the University of the Basque Country from the 3th to the 6th of March, where Camilla Calabrese, Imanol Usabiaga, Elena R. Alonso, Aran Insausti, Maider Parra and Otger Crehuet were part of the Organizing Comittee.

The constitution, configuration, and flexibility of the core sugars of DNA molecules alter their function in diverse roles. Conformational itineraries of the ribofuranosides (fs) have long been known to finely determine rates of processing, yet we also know that, strikingly, semifunctional DNAs containing pyranosides (ps) or other configurations can be created, suggesting sufficient but uncompletely understood plasticity. The multiple conformers involved in such processes are necessarily influenced by context and environment: solvent, hosts, ligands. Notably, however, to date the unbiased, “naked” conformers have not been experimentally determined. Here, the inherent conformational biases of DNA scaffold deoxyribosides in unsolvated and solvated forms have now been defined using gas-phase microwave and solution-phase NMR spectroscopies coupled with computational analyses and exploitation of critical differences between natural-abundance isotopologues. Serial determination of precise, individual spectra for conformers of these 25 isotopologues in alpha (α-d) and beta (β-d); pyrano (p) and furano (f) methyl 2-deoxy-d-ribosides gave not only unprecedented atomic-level resolution structures of associated conformers but also their quantitative populations. Together these experiments revealed that typical ²E and ³E conformations of the sugar found in complex DNA structures are not inherently populated. Moreover, while both OH-5′ and OH-3′ are constrained by intramolecular hydrogen bonding in the unnatural αf scaffold, OH-3′ is “born free” in the “naked” lowest lying energy conformer of natural βf. Consequently, upon solvation, unnatural αf is strikingly less perturbable (retaining ²T₁ conformation in vacuo and water) than natural βf. Unnatural αp and βp ribosides also display low conformational perturbability. These first experimental data on inherent, unbiased conformers therefore suggest that it is the background of conformational flexibility of βf that may have led to its emergence out of multiple possibilities as the sugar scaffold for “life’s code” and suggest a mechanism by which the resulting freedom of OH-3′ (and hence accessibility as a nucleophile) in βf may drive preferential processing and complex structure formation, such as replicative propagation of DNA from 5′-to-3′.

The paper has been accepted by ACS Central Science

Maider Parra  wins the UPV/EHU Predoctoral Grant.

Congratulations!

Dr. Imanol Usabiaga wins the UPV/EHU Posdoctoral Grant.

Congratulations!

Dr. José Elguero and Dr. Ibon Alkorta visited our group a week ago. They gave two amazing talks at the University of the Basque Country entitled “El futuro de la ciencia” (by Dr. Elguero) and “Anion-anion and cation-cation complexes” (by Dr. Alkorta).

In the picture bellow, Dr. Alkorta giving his talk.

Elena R. Alonso, Camilla Calabrese and Imanol Usabiaga attended the JIQ 2019 in Valencia.

In the picture bellow, Elena, Camilla and Imanol giving a talk.

Aitziber Kortajarena visited our group and gave a talk called “Biomolecular nanotechnology: from protein engineering to functional bio-hydrids and materials” at Biofisika Institute.

Thank you Aitziber!