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Industrial Liaison Group:
Tel: +44 (0) 1235 778797
E-mail: [email protected]
Welcome to the fifth issue of the Structural Biology newsletter from Diamond!
The scientific and technical teams at Diamond have been working hard to enhance your experience as a user with a series of new developments and upgrades. Diamond's user community has greatly benefited from fast and high capacity sample changers, which are now standard on all MX beamlines.
Striving to provide a cutting edge technical environment, the team at Diamond has been concentrating its development efforts on the construction of new beamlines; the long wavelength MX beamline (I23) and the sub-micron beamline (VMXm). For VMXm, a longer than usual shutdown period has been necessary in order to fit an extra insertion device for the beamline within a Double Double Bend Achromat. This action represents the largest upgrade of the Diamond machine since operation began.
We hope that this newsletter will help to keep you up to date with the very latest developments, updates and events on our structural biology beamlines. If you have any ideas or suggestions for events that you would find interesting or useful, please do let us know at [email protected]
On the 4th October 2016, the newly transformed I02 beamline took first light in its new format; as a Versatile Macromolecular crystallography in situ (VMXi) beamline. Opening it's doors in late 2016, VMXi will be an entirely automated facility for the characterisation of, and data collection directly from, crystallisation experiments in situ. Read more here....
The eBIC (electron Bio-Imaging Centre) at Diamond Light Source provides scientists with state-of-the-art experimental equipment and expertise in the field of cryo-electron microscopy, for single particle analysis and cryo-tomography.
Powerful cryo-electron microscopes allow users to investigate the structure of individual cells and to visualise single bio-molecules, exploiting techniques that are rarely available at home laboratories. Read more here...
B24 is a dedicated biology beamline that bridges the gap between electron microscopy and conventional light microscopy. Currently in optimisation mode, the full-field X-ray microscope allows whole cells to be rapidly imaged in great detail. Read more here....
The UK is taking a leading role in the development of a new structural biology facility (SFX) at the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL), in Hamburg, Germany, and a complementary facility at Diamond (The UK XFEL Hub) to help develop the required expertise. Read more here...
I24 is a tuneable microfocus beamline for MX. It was the first beamline of its kind to be built in Europe and has been operating since 2008. It has recently completed its upgrade. The rebuild of the endstation is complete (hardware-wise) and new mirrors are now at Diamond and will be installed early 2016. When complete we will be able to offer a ~2.5x5 micron beam with a state-of-the-art endstation. Read more here...
The new robotic sample changer BART is now operational on all MX beamlines. The new robot has improved exchange times, increased sample capacity significantly and is more tightly integrated into the beamline control systems which means reliability has also improved. Read more...
Crystal-based fragment screening of novel protein targets linked to disease has truly come of age: Diamond's XChem facility has been operating a regular user programme since 2015, with other synchrotrons soon to follow suit. A progression of user projects have confirmed the power of this approach to discover both diverse chemotypes and unexpected mechanisms of action, especially allosteric binders. At the same time, the continued success in unearthing a rich array of fragment hits has now decisively shifted the bottleneck onto the question of how to translate hits into high potency leads. This challenge has highlighted the need for efficient and scalable methodologies in the areas of library design, label-free assays, computational compound design and the synthesis of complex lead molecules. This symposium aims to highlight the opportunities that must be explored if routine fragment screening is to turn into routine lead discovery. The event will bring together speakers from diverse disciplines to help define the methodology, focus and goals for fragment screening in the coming years.
The goal of the workshop is to teach users the best practices in sample preparation for cryo-EM imaging. The workshop will be composed of lectures, covering the theory behind sample preparation for cryo-EM, as well as hands-on training sessions in the vitrification of selected biological samples. Participants will prepare vitrified samples on the latest generation of plunge-freezing devices and subsequently screen these samples with the eBIC Titan Krios and Talos Arctica electron microscopes. This workshop will be geared toward novices and aims to equip them with the necessary skill set to further develop their cryo-EM expertise at their home laboratories. Several biological test samples will be provided allowing participants hands on experience with a variety of samples.
MX BAG training takes place 2-3 times annually at Diamond. If you or a colleague would like to take part please let us know on [email protected]
If you would like to receive the Structural Biology Newsletter by email, please let us know [email protected].
Diamond Light Source is the UK's national synchrotron science facility, located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
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