Dissecting modular synthases through inhibition: A complementary chemical and genetic approach.

Modular synthases, such as fatty acid, polyketide, and non-ribosomal peptide synthases (NRPSs), are sophisticated machineries essential in both primary and secondary metabolism. Various techniques have been developed to understand their genetic background and enzymatic abilities. However, uncovering the actual biosynthetic pathways remains challenging. Herein, we demonstrate a pipeline to study an assembly line synthase by interrogating the enzymatic function of each individual enzymatic domain of BpsA, a NRPS that produces the blue 3,3'-bipyridyl pigment indigoidine. Specific inhibitors for each biosynthetic domain of BpsA were obtained or synthesized, and the enzymatic performance of BpsA upon addition of each inhibitor was monitored by pigment development in vitro and in living bacteria. The results were verified using genetic mutants to inactivate each domain. Finally, the results complemented the currently proposed biosynthetic pathway of BpsA.

Symmetry between repulsive and attractive interactions in driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard systems.

The driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard model can be experimentally realized with either negative or positive onsite detunings, inter-site hopping energies, and onsite interaction energies. Here we use one-dimensional matrix product density operators to perform a fully quantum investigation of the dependence of the non-equilibrium steady states of this model on the signs of these parameters. Due to a symmetry in the Lindblad master equation, we find that simultaneously changing the sign of the interaction energies, hopping energies, and chemical potentials leaves the local boson number distribution and inter-site number correlations invariant, and the steady-state complex conjugated. This shows that all driven-dissipative phenomena of interacting bosons described by the Lindblad master equation, such as "fermionization" and "superbunching", can equivalently occur with attractive or repulsive interactions.

Fluorescent Mechanism-Based Probe for Aerobic Flavin-Dependent Enzyme Activity.

Diversity in non-ribosomal peptide and polyketide secondary metabolism is facilitated by interactions between biosynthetic domains with discrete monomer loading and their cognate tailoring enzymes, such as oxidation or halogenation enzymes. The cooperation between peptidyl carrier proteins and flavin-dependent enzymes offers a specialized strategy for monomer selectivity for oxidization of small molecules from within a complex cellular milieu. In an effort to study this process, we have developed fluorescent probes to selectively label aerobic flavin-dependent enzymes. Here we report the preparation and implementation of these tools to label oxidase, monooxygenase, and halogenase flavin-dependent enzymes.

Observation of a disordered bosonic insulator from weak to strong interactions.

We employ ultracold atoms with controllable disorder and interaction to study the paradigmatic problem of disordered bosons in the full disorder-interaction plane. Combining measurements of coherence, transport and excitation spectra, we get evidence of an insulating regime extending from weak to strong interaction and surrounding a superfluidlike regime, in general agreement with the theory. For strong interaction, we reveal the presence of a strongly correlated Bose glass coexisting with a Mott insulator.

Nature of the spin-liquid ground state of the S=1/2 Heisenberg model on the kagome lattice.

We perform a density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) study of the S=1/2 Heisenberg antiferromagnet on the kagome lattice to identify the conjectured spin liquid ground state. Exploiting SU(2) spin symmetry, which allows us to keep up to 16,000 DMRG states, we consider cylinders with circumferences up to 17 lattice spacings and find a spin liquid ground state with an estimated per site energy of -0.4386(5), a spin gap of 0.13(1), very short-range decay in spin, dimer and chiral correlation functions, and finite topological entanglement γ consistent with γ=log(2)2, ruling out gapless, chiral, or nontopological spin liquids in favor of a topological spin liquid of quantum dimension 2, with strong evidence for a gapped topological Z(2) spin liquid.

Coherent spin-current oscillations in transverse magnetic fields.

We address the coherence of the dynamics of spin-currents with components transverse to an external magnetic field for the spin-1/2 Heisenberg chain. We study current autocorrelations at finite temperatures and the real-time dynamics of currents at zero temperature. Besides a coherent Larmor oscillation, we find an additional collective oscillation at higher frequencies, emerging as a coherent many-magnon effect at low temperatures. Using numerical and analytical methods, we analyze the oscillation frequency and decay time of this coherent current-mode versus temperature and magnetic field.