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Jens Uhlig. Portrait.

Jens Uhlig

Senior lecturer

Jens Uhlig. Portrait.

Taking snapshots of photosynthetic water oxidation using femtosecond X-ray diffraction and spectroscopy.

Author

  • Jan Kern
  • Rosalie Tran
  • Roberto Alonso-Mori
  • Sergey Koroidov
  • Nathaniel Echols
  • Johan Hattne
  • Mohamed Ibrahim
  • Sheraz Gul
  • Hartawan Laksmono
  • Raymond G Sierra
  • Richard J Gildea
  • Guangye Han
  • Julia Hellmich
  • Benedikt Lassalle-Kaiser
  • Ruchira Chatterjee
  • Aaron S Brewster
  • Claudiu A Stan
  • Carina Glöckner
  • Alyssa Lampe
  • Dörte DiFiore
  • Despina Milathianaki
  • Alan R Fry
  • M Marvin Seibert
  • Jason E Koglin
  • Erik Gallo
  • Jens Uhlig
  • Dimosthenis Sokaras
  • Tsu-Chien Weng
  • Petrus H Zwart
  • David E Skinner
  • Michael J Bogan
  • Marc Messerschmidt
  • Pieter Glatzel
  • Garth J Williams
  • Sébastien Boutet
  • Paul D Adams
  • Athina Zouni
  • Johannes Messinger
  • Nicholas K Sauter
  • Uwe Bergmann
  • Junko Yano
  • Vittal K Yachandra
Show all

Summary, in English

The dioxygen we breathe is formed by light-induced oxidation of water in photosystem II. O2 formation takes place at a catalytic manganese cluster within milliseconds after the photosystem II reaction centre is excited by three single-turnover flashes. Here we present combined X-ray emission spectra and diffraction data of 2-flash (2F) and 3-flash (3F) photosystem II samples, and of a transient 3F' state (250 $s after the third flash), collected under functional conditions using an X-ray free electron laser. The spectra show that the initial O-O bond formation, coupled to Mn reduction, does not yet occur within 250 $s after the third flash. Diffraction data of all states studied exhibit an anomalous scattering signal from Mn but show no significant structural changes at the present resolution of 4.5 Å. This study represents the initial frames in a molecular movie of the structural changes during the catalytic reaction in photosystem II.

Publishing year

2014-01-01

Language

English

Pages

4371-4371

Publication/Series

Nature Communications

Volume

5

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Nature Publishing Group

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2041-1723