We are delighted to announce that the prestigious ERC Consolidator Grant 2023 was awarded to a former member of our Analytical Chemistry group, Associate Professor Anneli Kruve at Stockholm University!
Anneli Kruve
The European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant is aimed to support early-career researchers to consolidate their own independent research team or program over the next five years. We are very proud that this year one of the awardees was Anneli Kruve, Associate Professor at Stockholm University and head of the Mass Spectrometry Laboratory. In her research, she combines analytical chemistry with modeling and machine learning. The goal of the ERC funding is to support the research of her group on developing broader and more accurate methods to characterize and measure toxic chemicals in environmental samples.
Only a few percent of chemicals that cause the toxic activity of environmental samples are currently known. In this project, Anneli and her group will combine high-resolution mass spectrometry and machine learning to find novel toxic chemical structures, which enables focusing the toxicity research on chemicals that truly matter. Understanding the emission and transformation processes of toxic chemicals is a necessary step to decrease the chemical risks in the environment.
More information about the research performed by Anneli’s group can be found on the Kruve lab webpage.
Our Archemy group has recently published two major collaborative articles about the arrival and spread of early farming in NE Baltic.
Based on pottery lipid residue and dietary stable isotope analysis combined with zooarchaeological data and archaeobotanical studies, it was shown that farming arrived in the NE Baltic with migrating Corded Ware cultures in the early 3rd millennium cal BCE, but here this new subsistence strategy relied on stockbreeding rather than crop cultivation.
Early farmers in the NE Baltic were exploiting both domesticated and wild species, whilst the introduction of domesticates had little if any impact on local hunter-fisher-gatherer communities who remained true to their forager lifeways. There was no clear transition from foraging to farming in the 3rd millennium cal BCE NE Baltic, instead we see separated communities and parallel worlds of local foragers and incoming early farmers practicing mixed economy. However, the lipid residue data in the wider Baltic context shows several regional variations in the arrival and spread of early farming practices.
Read full articles here:
Oras, E., Tõrv, M., Johanson, K, Rannamäe, E. et al. 2023. Parallel worlds and mixed economies: multi-proxy analysis reveals complex subsistence systems at the dawn of early farming in the northeast Baltic. R. Soc. open sci. 10230880230880. http://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230880
Lucquin, A., Robson, H. Oras, E. et al. 2023. The impact of farming on prehistoric culinary practices throughout Northern Europe. PNAS. 120 (43) e2310138120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2310138120
This year, the laureate of the Ann Mihkelson’s scholarship is Elisabeth Parman!
The scholarship was founded in 2011 by Anu Ebbe Mihkelson and its purpose is to support female scientists and doctoral students, especially chemists, with their research or supervision of master’s and doctoral students. We are happy to announce that this year, the scholarship was awarded to a young researcher from our Chair of Analytical Chemistry group – junior researcher/doctoral student Elisabeth Parman.
Opening day of the IBSA 10th meeting at the Estonian National Museum (Photo: Peeter Paaver)
Although archaeology has been inherently interdisciplinary from its early years, recent decades have seen changes referred to as the third scientific revolution in archaeology. Innovative methods enable us to answer previously unanswered questions and pose new ones about the past.
Biomolecular archaeology brings together archaeologists, historians, biologists, and chemists. From September 13th to 15th, the tenth International Symposium of Biomolecular Archaeology (ISBA10) took place at the Estonian National Museum in Tartu. The conference provided a comprehensive overview of the field, covering various research topics, from the domestication of different species to ancient diseases and migrations, as well as the methods employed. The conference abstracts are available here.
The material heritage studied through biomolecular archaeology methods is an irreplaceable resource. Therefore, it must be treated sustainably – obtaining maximum information with minimal damage. For example, it is possible determine the species of a bone to simply by rubbing its surface with an eraser (ZooMS). Still, we must continually justify the use of human remains as research resources, and ask whether the scientists’ perspective aligns with the institutions curating collections, as Rita Peyroteo-Stjerna reminded us. When analysing ancient materials, it is important to leave a mark. The field of biomolecular archaeology is increasingly recognizing the need for data standardization and accessibility, as demonstrated by James Fellows Yates in his presentation on a community-based approach to data integration.
Ester Oras putting up her poster (Photo: Peeter Paaver)
Genetics, one sub-field of biomolecular archaeology, is rapidly evolving. It no longer focuses solely on major migrations. New technologies offer insights into ancient diseases, the environment, and even the presence of people where their remains are absent. For example, today we can obtain information about people from ancient chewing-gums or worn jewellery. Also, social structure and kinship is analysed in collaboration with archaeologists.
The molecules of lipids, proteins, and carbohydrates have been preserved in various ancient objects as burnt food crust or by being absorbed into pots, in animal and human bones, and other tissues, as well as in plants. While stable isotope analysis of bulk collagen provides a general picture of the diet, stable isotopes of individual amino acids allow distinguishing between terrestrial and aquatic origin of proteins.
Biomolecular archaeology cannot be the domain of nerds quietly working in the lab. Both keynote speakers at the conference, Anne Stone and Carl Heron, provided a broader insight into the developments of biomolecular archaeology. The former focused on one catalyst of the revolution, ancient DNA research, the significance of which for society was highlighted by the Nobel Prize awarded to Svante Pääbo in 2022. Carl Heron provided an excellent framework for the history of biomolecular archaeology and urged the community to think more about bringing scientific results to the public.
Over 400 participants attended the ISBA 10th meeting (Photo: Peeter Paaver).
The conference was organized by: the University of Tartu and the Geenikeskus Foundation.
The organization of the conference was supported by: the Collegium for Transdisciplinary Studies in Archaeology, Genetics, and Linguistics of the University of Tartu, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, the Faculty of Science and Technology; the International Society for Biomolecular Archaeology (ISBA); the city of Tartu; the European Union through the PaleoMIX (No 101079396) and cGEM (No 810645) projects.
From left to right: opponent Dr. Shinya Shoda, Dr. Shidong Chen, supervisors Dr. Ester Oras and Prof. Ivo Leito
Shidong’s PhD work is aimed at discovering plant exploitation in the ancient eastern Baltic area with a focus on two types of plant-derived materials: resinous materials and dietary plants. The main innovations are developing multi-methodological approaches and interpreting multi-proxy datasets with chemometric and statistical methods.
For identifying the composition of resinous adhesives, ATR-FT-IR analysis was conducted in combination with a PCA-based DA classification model for further compositional and spatial/temporal classification. This method can help simplify IR spectra interpretation and reduce the need for GC-MS analysis.
For identifying dietary plants, a multi-method approach was applied by plant micro fossil analysis and EA-IRMS combined with ORA. EA-IRMS can provide preliminary origins of samples with plant and/or animal bases. Plant micro fossil analysis and ORA in complementary can identify the species of plant remains. Correspondence analysis further compares and indicates the agreement of the three methods and visualizes the correlations between the multi-proxy data.
Dr. Shidong Chen moments before the presentation
The plant exploitation in prehistoric easter Baltic shows different patterns with dedicated multi-method case studies on several Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age sites. In the Stone Age, plant exploitation was more technological (adhesives and resinous compounds) than dietary-related. The plant consumption for dietary purposes became more abundant in the Bronze Age. The major changes happened with the Iron Age displaying a more diverse plant-based diet with more inclusion of C3 cereals (e.g., wheat and barley), yet the spread and cultivation of C4 millet may not have emerged in this region.
Shidong is currently working at ARCHEMY lab as a lab technician at the University of Tartu. He will continue his journey discovering ancient food ways from pots and bones.
Last Wednesday, August 30th, 2023, a moment that marks the culmination of years of hard work and determination of Ernesto de Jesus Zapata Flores – an AMS alumnus. He successfully defended his PhD thesis titled Derivatization Reagents used in negative mode electrospray LC-MS. The opponent was Associate Professor Jeffrey Hawkes from the University of Uppsala, Sweden.
In the vast application of derivatization reagents in RPLC-UV and RPLC-MS positive mode, Ernesto’s thesis delved into the question: What about LC-MS negative mode? Why don’t we compare both modes and see the best of both worlds?
Later on, the method applying two azobenzene-based reagents, which were called AzoB and AzoC (synthesized in our lab), has been fully developed specifically for LC-QqQ. The “gourmet” part that Ernesto has brought to the table of the analytical chemistry community was the study of (2) MS/MS fragmentations of all three reagents with different amino compounds in both ionization modes.
Moreover, his thesis has demonstrated comprehensive research about (3) optimization for the derivatization process and the ion source, (4) the confirmation of reaction yields, and (5) the correlation between ionization efficiency and LOD/LOQ of derivatives. Finally, applications of the validated method (7) for real-world samples (different beverages: beers, Kali, juices) and (8) neutral loss scan have been showcased.
10 out of 10 – that should be given for Ernesto’s dedication on the road to becoming an expert in LC-MS derivatization. Congratulations, Ernesto! We eagerly await your next academic steps. Hopefully, all your goals will be achieved.
Dr. Signe Vahur, during her vacation to Washington DC, USA, had the possibility to visit the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute (MCI) labs.
The MCI is the center for specialized technical collection research and conservation for all Smithsonian museums and collections. MCI combines knowledge of materials and the history of technology with state-of-the-art instrumentation and scientific techniques to provide technical research studies and interpretation of artistic, anthropological, biological, and historical objects (webpage: https://mci.si.edu/).
Dr. Asher Newsome, a physical scientist at MCI, kindly showed her the research labs equipped with different analytical instruments (e.g., chromatographs (GC, LC), mass spectrometers, spectrometers (FT-IR, Raman, SEM-EDS)) and labs for conserving paintings, textiles, and paper items. He introduced some of his research work, and they had a good discussion of various analysis options for cultural heritage materials.
This visit was very beneficial and raised new collaboration possibilities in the future.
During June 4-8, 2023, Signe Vahur and Anu Teearu-Ojakäär attended the 71st ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics, held in Houston, USA.
Signe and Anu presenting their poster
At the ASMS conference, Signe and Anu presented their poster “MALDI-MS for the analysis of cultural heritage materials” during the Monday (June 5) poster session.
On Wednesday evening (June 7), Signe was an invited panelist (along with Dr G. Asher Newsome from Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute, USA; Prof Paul Haynes from Macquarie University, Australia; Dr Aleksandra Popowich from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, USA; Assoc Prof Enrico Cappellini from University of Copenhagen, Denmark; and Assoc Prof Troy Wood from University of Buffalo, USA) in the workshop “Art, Museums, and Archaeology” and had a very interesting discussion with approximately 70 attendees.
Altogether, the ASMS 2023 conference had more than 6300 attendees from all over the World. During four days there were 384 oral presentations (that ran in 8 parallel panels) and 4 presentations by invited speakers; 2939 poster presentations (more than 700 posters per day) and 178 corporate members presenting their products – instruments, labware, sample preparation, software solutions, etc. In addition, there were 50 evening workshops, 49 breakfast seminars, and 16 daily corporate hospitality suits.
All in all, the 71st ASMS Conference was a great experience with a lot of new connections, great discussions, and networking opportunities. Thank you to the organisers of the 71st ASMS Conference for delivering such a high-level event!
Signe talking during the panel sessionSigne in the main conference hall
In this work, a new group of bases with benzophenoneiminyl (bpi) moiety was synthesized and characterized. A convenient one-pot approach was employed to synthesize the starting compound tris(benzophenoneimino)phosphane (P(bpi)3): benzophenone imine was deprotonated using MeMgCl, followed by its reaction with PBr3 in diglyme. This method offers an alternative for preparing other (amino)phosphanes as well when lithio-intermediates and/or protonated phosphanes are not viable options. P(bpi)3 was subsequently utilized to synthesize a variety of related phosphonium cations and phosphazenes.
Crystals from synthesis
The stability of the resulting phosphonium ylides was assessed through their deprotonation. In certain cases, the bulky substances demonstrated the ability to form P-N heterocycles with adjacent P and N atoms and P=C double bonds which are quite rare and only some representatives of this type of heterocycles have been reported before. The basicities of benzophenone imine, P(bpi)3, phosphonium ylides, and phosphazenes were evaluated experimentally (in MeCN) or computationally (in MeCN, THF, and gas-phase). Additionally, representative X-ray crystallography (XRD) structures were presented and discussed. Although the bpi-compounds are not as strong as many existing bases, they still exhibit considerable basicity and could be employed as reagents to overcome common challenges such as solubility, ion-pairing, lack of UV-Vis properties, and other issues.
From the 22nd to the 24th of March, Marta attended the 4th International Conference On Phosphorus, Boron and Silicon (PBSi2023) in Berlin.
PBSi2023 brought together a wide range of scientists from all over the world who love these three elements and want to share the advances they have made in PBSi chemistry. It was Marta’s (presenting on the picture) first conference and she had the pleasure of giving an oral presentation about her current work on benzophenoneiminyl-substituted novel organophosphorus bases.
In her words, it was a great experience from the perspective of science, but it was also exciting to meet new people in her field and create lasting memories, and she hopes that there are many more conferences to come.
