Galactomannans are hemicelluloses composed of a β-1,4-linked mannose backbone with α-1,6-galactose substitutions.
They are part of our diet as seed storage polysacchardies and food thickeners and are utilised
by several human gut bacteria (1). One such bacteria, Bacteroides ovatus, contains a gene cluster encoding
two glycoside hydrolase family 26 β-mannanases, BoMan26A and BoMan26B (2)....
X-ray free electron lasers (XFEL) have sparked the development of time-resolved serial femtosecond crystallography (TR-SFX), which is a completely new experimental approach to understanding protein structural dynamics. We have used TR-SFX at the LCLS (an XFEL in California) to probe light-driven structural changes from picoseconds to microseconds in a bacterial photosynthetic reaction centre....
