{"id":208313,"date":"2025-03-11T06:19:31","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T11:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/x-ray-snapshot-how-light-bends-an-active-substance"},"modified":"2025-03-11T06:19:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T11:19:31","slug":"x-ray-snapshot-how-light-bends-an-active-substance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/x-ray-snapshot-how-light-bends-an-active-substance","title":{"rendered":"X-ray snapshot: How light bends an active substance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/x-ray-snapshot-how-light-bends-an-active-substance2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Many biologically important molecules change shape when stimulated by UV radiation. Although this property can also be found in some drugs, it is not yet well understood. Using an innovative technique, an international team involving researchers from Goethe University Frankfurt, the European XFEL in Schenefeld and the Deutschen Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg has elucidated this ultra-fast process, and made it visible in slow motion, with the help of X-ray light. The method opens up exciting new ways of analyzing many other molecules.<\/p>\n<p>The study is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41467-025-57083-3\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Nature Communications.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe investigated the molecule 2-thiouracil, which belongs to a group of pharmaceutically active substances based on certain DNA building blocks, the nucleobases,\u201d says the study\u2019s last author Markus G\u00fchr, the head of DESY\u2019s free-electron laser FLASH and Professor of Chemistry at University of Hamburg. 2-thiouracil and its chemically related active substances have a sulfur atom, which gives the molecules its unusual, medically relevant properties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many biologically important molecules change shape when stimulated by UV radiation. Although this property can also be found in some drugs, it is not yet well understood. Using an innovative technique, an international team involving researchers from Goethe University Frankfurt, the European XFEL in Schenefeld and the Deutschen Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg has elucidated this [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-chemistry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}