Bad metal behaviour [1,2] describes the unusual nonlinear dependency of a high specific resistivity of a metallic material with temperature.This feature is important e. g. for the decoupling of thermal and electrical conductivity, a key point for high-efficiency thermoelectrics.Also, giant magnetoresistance is coupled with bad metal behaviour.Despite the high interest in bad metals, concepts how to control this behaviour are still scarce.The physical background is well understood: bad metal behaviour is the consequence of a low concentration of conduction electrons with a very short mean free path [3].It is, however, unclear how to translate these parameters in chemical or structural parameters which can directly be influenced by material scientists.

The oxidoreductase myeloperoxidase (MPO) plays a key role in phagocytotic killing of invading pathogens by neutrophils as part of the innate immune response [1] . It is a highly stable dimeric protein, that undergoes a number of post-translational processing steps, including proteolytic cleavage at multiple sites, complex glycosylation and formation of an interdimeric disulphide bridge before being packaged into the neutrophil azurophilic granules [2, 3] . The structural and biological relevance of some of these modifications, especially dimerization and glycosylation remain to be understood.

Sugar distribution plays essential roles in energy, signaling, and defense mechanisms. Sugar Transport Proteins (STPs) are part of the Sugar Porter family that also include human GLUTs. In plants, STPs are responsible for proton-driven cellular uptake of glucose, derived from sucrose in the apoplast. Few STPs also facilitate uptake of fructose, the other constituent of sucrose but the molecular features that define differences in specificity are unknown. Here I present our work on elucidating substrate specificity in STPs, including new structural data of Arabidopsis thaliana STP6. We show that it is both a glucose and fructose transporter and perform a comparative analysis between STP6 and the glucose-specific STP10 using in-vivo and in-vitro based systems. We show how kinetic transport properties are influenced by the experimental setup and give insights into the fine-tuned dynamics of affinity-induced specificity for hexose uptake, ultimately showing how the position of a single methyl group in the binding site is sufficient to determine substrate specificity. These findings advance the understanding of hexose trafficking by Sugar Porters and extend the framework for engineering specific hexose transport.

Antimicrobial-resistance (AMR) stands nowadays as a pressing concern in public health.A group of six pathogens is named with the acronym 'ESKAPE' because of their ability to evade the biocidal action of traditional clinically used antibiotics [1,2].Structural insight of molecular factors which play a key role in AMR is fundamental to deeply understand their mechanisms on and develop effective new drugs.The bacterium Klebsiella pneumoniae exploits various instruments to evade the immune system response and antibiotic attacks during infection.One such strategy involves its cell envelope, that includes polysaccharide layers acting as protective shield against stress and external substances.Virion-associated depolymerases are large trimeric and multi-domain proteins that constitute the phage arsenal to degrade the polysaccharidic barriers in outer membrane of their bacterial host [3].Thus, as recombinant proteins, they are endowed with outstanding potential in biotechnology and medicine [4].In this study [5], we elucidated the structural and functional features of the capsular depolymerase KP34gp57 from the Klebsiella phage KP34.Based on the crystal structure and site-directed mutagenesis, we localized the key catalytic residues in an intra-subunit deep groove.Moreover, we engineered several N-and C-terminally truncated versions of KP34gp57 to dissect the role of each domain in the enzyme stability and catalytic activity.Serendipitously, our studies revealed C-terminally trimmed KP34gp57 variants that did not trimerize and were sufficiently stable to preserve full catalytic activity as monomers [6].The development of trimmed monomeric and fully active phage depolymerases is innovative in the field, as no previous example exists apart from bacterial enzymes.Mini phage depolymerases can be optionally combined within chimeric enzymes to extend their activity range, facilitating their use in standalone treatments.

Resonant Elastic X-ray Scattering (REXS) is a powerful technique successfully employed to investigate a wide range of phenomena both in solids and thin films [1] [2] [3] . The particular combination of diffraction and spectroscopy features of this experimental approach allows the study of different charge, spin, and orbital orderings. The beamline P09 [4] at PETRA III (DESY) is dedicated to the REXS technique, and one of the main research topics at the beamline is the application of this technique to the study of magnetic structures. This is achieved by combining different experimental capabilities implemented at P09, like a small incident beam, a high photon flux, a full control of the incident polarization and the possibility of determining the polarization of the scattered X-ray beam. However, the analysis of magnetic data collected in a REXS experiment is very intricate and the lack of any tool to facilitate such analysis slows down and even prevents the achievement of proper results. To overcome this difficulty, there is an ongoing project at P09 beamline to develop MagStREXS: a crystallographic software to analyse magnetic structures based on REXS diffraction data. The aim of MagStREXS is to simplify the analysis of this type of data to the non-specialist in the field. In this talk some basic ideas about the REXS technique will be presented, together with the different experimental possibilities available at beamline P09 for the application of this technique to the study of magnetic structures. The main part of the presentation will be dedicated to the program MagStREXS and the most relevant features implemented until now, introducing some examples of magnetic structures investigated with this software in the field of strongly correlated systems.