Science Highlights & News
March 2012
The kinetic dose limit in room-temperature time-resolved macromolecular crystallography
M. Schmidt, V. Srajer, N. Purwar, and S. Tripathi
Journal of Synchrotron Radiation . (2012). 19, 264-273
doi: 10.1107/S090904951105549X.
Protein X-ray structures are determined with ionizing radiation that damages the protein at high X-ray doses. As a result, diffraction patterns deteriorate with the increased absorbed dose. Several strategies such as sample freezing or scavenging of X-ray-generated free radicals are currently employed to minimize this damage. However, little is known about how the absorbed X-ray dose affects time-resolved Laue data collected at physiological temperatures where the protein is fully functional in the crystal, and how the kinetic analysis of such data depends on the absorbed dose. Here, direct evidence for the impact of radiation damage on the function of a protein is presented using time-resolved macromolecular crystallography. The effect of radiation damage on the kinetic analysis of time-resolved X-ray data is also explored.
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Facility News
November 2011
Moffat Appointed Senior Advisor for Life Sciences at the APS
The Advanced Photon Source (APS) is the Western Hemisphere’s most powerful source of x-rays for research. It attracts more than 4,000 users from academia, industry, and government laboratories around the world each year for research in all fields of science. In particular, almost half of the user community is in the life sciences area. The appointment of a Senior Advisor for Life Sciences at the APS (SALSA) to provide a stronger linkage with the life sciences community has been recommended by APS review committees and has been a priority for APS management. Furthermore, ongoing preparations for a major upgrade to the APS require strategic decisions that will benefit from the advice provided by an expert in this field. Following the recommendation of a search committee composed of APS management and users, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Prof. Keith Moffat of the University of Chicago to this position.
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BioCARS is a national user facility for synchrotron-based static and dynamic studies of biological macromolecules, located at Sector 14 of the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory.
BioCARS is an integral part of the multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary Center for Advanced Radiation Sources (CARS) at the University of Chicago.
The mission of BioCARS is to develop state-of-the-art facilities and provide scientific and technical expertise and user support for studies of static and dynamic properties of macromolecules by X-ray scattering techniques such as static and time-resolved crystallography, SAXS/WAXS and fiber diffraction. The goal of research conducted at BioCARS is to understand basic biological processes in structural and dynamic terms, at the atomic resolution level. Scientific problems addressed by BioCARS users and staff are fundamental to basic science, highly relevant to significant biomedical problems and of great practical importance to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.
BioCARS operates two experimental stations, embedded in a Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) facility.
This BSL-3 synchrotron-based capability is unique in the United States and permits safe studies of biohazardous materials, such as pathogenic human viruses.
BioCARS: a synchrotron resource for time-resolved X-ray science
Graber et al, J. Synchrotron Rad. 18, 658-670 (2011).
More about BioCARS: Facility and Scientific Mission › (PDF)
Time-resolved crystallography: past, present and future › (PDF)
Apply for BioCARS beamtime:
Submit a proposal through the APS General User Program ›
Note: BioCARS is now using the APS scheduling system for scheduling user beamtime. To submit the trip information for your scheduled beamtime, please follow the links in your beamtime notification or ESAF reminder e-mails or login to the APS scheduling system.
