Recently in general announcements Category

For older browsers, or non-flash enabled mobile browsers, we offer the old skool status page which has convenient small png files showing the last 24 hours of beamline data, but if you want to have a hands-on experience you might want to try out our new Google-style annotated time lines. If you're familiar with the Google finance web page where you can zoom in and explore the historical trends of the worlds financial markets you'll understand the coolness of this new tool.

The SIBYLS beamline has recently been awarded 50,000 hours on the NERSC (National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center) to perform solution structure modeling using experimental SAXS data. Besides the usual ab-initio reconstructions programs a new approach in rigid body modeling BILBOMD has been parallelized on the NERSC supercomputer. It is commonly acknowledged that flexibility between domains of proteins is often critical for function. These motions, and proteins with large scale flexibility in general, are often not readily amenable to conventional structural analysis such as X-ray crystallography, NMR, or electron microscopy. We have developed an analysis tool using experimental SAXS measurements to identify flexibility and validate a constructed minimal ensemble of models which represent highly populated conformations in solution. The resolution is sufficient to address questions about the extent of the domain conformational sampling in solution? In our rigid body modeling strategy BILBOMD, molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are used to explore conformational space. A typical experiment involves  MD simulation on the domain connections at very high temperature, where the additional kinetic energy prevents the molecule from becoming trapped in a local minimum. The MD simulations provide an ensemble of molecular models from which a SAXS curve is calculated and compared to the experimental curve. A genetic algorithm is then used to identify the minimal ensemble (Minimal Ensemble Search, MES) required to best fit the experimental data. If you are interested in learning about and/or using this valuable SAXS analysis tool please contact Michal Hammel (MHammel at lbl dot gov).

Due to DOE budget cuts and planned upgrades to the ALS storage ring we will have no light until October 11th.

Hopefully we will be scheduling beamtime for Oct/Nov/Dec within the next couple of weeks. If you are interested in obtaining General Users shifts please fill out an online application.

Burgeoning crystallographers may find the high-throughput screening (HTS) laboratory, which is part of the Center for High-Throughput Structural Biology (CHTSB) at the Hauptman-Woodward Institute (HWI) to be a very logical starting point for determining the suitability of a particular sample for macromolecular crystallography studies. The HWI will prepare crystal-growth screening experiments in 1536-well microassay plates for about $300 per sample. More details are available on their website and in the FAQ.

As of Monday April 7th -

The Director of the National Institutes of Health shall require that all investigators funded by the NIH submit or have submitted for them to the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts upon acceptance for publication, to be made publicly available no later than 12 months after the official date of publication: Provided, That the NIH shall implement the public access policy in a manner consistent with copyright law. [FULL TEXT]

The Protein Data Bank is requiring, effective February 1, 2008 (i.e. tomorrow), that structure factor amplitudes/intensities for crystal structures must be deposited along with model coordinates. So if you need some structure factors to go along with your PDBs we can help you out. Apply for beamtime via the red “GENERAL USER PROPOSAL” link in the side bar to the right.

At least 18 publications were made possible by the SIBYLS beamline in 2007 and have been added to our publications page. We are very pleased that the PX and SAXS endstations have been so useful to so many researchers doing such varied work. We hope that 2008 will be even more productive. If you know of any publications that we have not included please let us know.