Max Planck Institutes and Experts

In the last decade, magnetic resonance in the solid state (solid-state NMR) has emerged as a powerful technique in structural biology as it gives access to structural information for systems which are insoluble or do not crystallize easily. For example, functional filamentous assemblies such as the needle of the type three secretion system (T3SS) – composed of multiple copies of a single small protein – can be readily studied.

The catalytic center of ribosomes is made up of ribonucleic acid (RNA). Catalysis is predominantly by orienting the substrates. The catalytic center is quite flexible; besides assembling amino acids to form proteins it catalyzes the hydrolytic liberation of the proteins after completion and accepts unnatural amino acids. This is utilized in Biotechnology for synthesizing proteins with particular properties. Peptide bond formation usually takes place spontaneously. However, linking several proline residues requires a special translation factor.

A group of astronomers led by Remco van den Bosch from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy has discovered a black hole that could shake the foundations of current models of galaxy evolution. At 17 billion times the mass of the Sun, its mass is much greater than current models predict – in particular in relation to the mass of its host galaxy. This could be the most massive black hole found to date.

An infrared imaging search with the Subaru telescope has captured a rare image of a “Super-Jupiter” around the massive star κ Andromedae. The gas giant has a mass about 13 times that of Jupiter, while the host star has a mass 2.5 times that of the Sun. There are strong indications that this planet formed in a manner similar to ordinary, lower-mass exoplanets: in a “protoplanetary disk” of gas and dust that surrounded the newborn star. This makes the planet an important test case for current models of planet formation and their predictions about planets around massive stars.

Seismic vibrations on Earth contain information about the structure of our planet, seismic vibrations on distant stellar remnants could shed light not only on the star itself but also on the basic constituents of all matter. The objects under study: neutron stars with strong magnetic fields. The method: a new model that combines both the elastic shear vibrations of the crust and pulsations caused by the magnetic field. Current X-ray observations can only be explained by the coupled vibrations and the model even predicts how high-energy radiation is modulated by these oscillations.