A huge thank you to Nike and the Forchhammer Lab and to Khaled Selim and all co-authors, especially our Natural-Product-Partner-in-Crime Chambers Hughes for solving the structure of 2’-deoxyxanthopterin B2, and Karoline Steuer-Lodd and the Ansel Hsiao lab for generating the mutants.

Our data show that CutA binds copper more strongly in the presence of pteridines, suggesting that these metabolites act as co-factors that modulate copper binding and redox homeostasis.

Combining the new tool with the bioluminescent bioreporter strains from Heike Brötz-Oesterhelt and her students Julian Schubert and Leonard Boldt was a key element to achieve the high sensitivity of the bioactivity assays needed for microfractions.

Most importantly, the paper wouldn't have been possible without Christian Geibel, who led the project, optimized the method, and pushed the paper over the finish line.

Thanks a lot Christian and everybody else at the University of Tuebingen and UC Riverside who were involved in the project 🧡🧡🧡

Another key component was the analysis software, which Simon Knoblauch, back then a master’s student in our group, built and which, thanks to the help of @mingxunwang.bsky.social, is now available through @gnps2.bsky.social.

Its great to see the project in completion after almost four years ago, when Albert Hernandez, a mechanical engineer from UCSD, joined us in Tübingen, and started building the microspotter.

This was a large interdisciplinary effort together with the groups of Heike Brötz-Oesterhelt within the @cmfi.bsky.social Tübingen, and @mingxunwang.bsky.social at @ucriverside.bsky.social.

Making use of high-speed, low-volume fractionation, we can achieve similar sampling rates for bioactivity measurements as for the mass spec DDA cycles, which enables correlation of LC-MS and LC-bioactivity data and pinpoints individual active metabolites.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTC9...

If you want to read more about how the changing reef exo-metabolome, driven by invasive red algae, affects kelp survival, you can find the paper here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Thanks for the shout-out! Most credits are due to @nike-wagner.bsky.social

This was a big collaborative effort with multiple groups from
@cmfi.bsky.social (Forchhammer, Selim, Link, Hughes) and @maxplanck.de Tuebingen (Hartmann), from microbiology phenotyping to metabolomics, natural product structure elucidation, and biophysical interaction studies. 🧡

We screened cell extracts from the cyanobacterium Synechococcus, for interaction with the homotrimer CutA, which can be found across the tree of life. Our results identified pteridines, to be ligands which enhances CutA copper binding and redox balance.

There will be also a remote participation option and all sessions will be recorded.
The recordings from our past summer schools are on youtube and linked on our web page:
www.functional-metabolomics.com/resources