Recently in general announcements Category
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.
A new review on macromolecular SAXS has been published in the Quarterly Reviews in Biophysics by Putnam, C.D., Hammel, M., Hura, G.L., and Tainer, J.A.
"This six part review addresses both theoretical and practical concepts, concerns and considerations for using these techniques in conjunction with computational methods to productively combine solution scattering data with high-resolution structures."
I’ve recently (i.e. today) enabled SSL connections to the SIBYLS website. This should give you piece of mind when sending private information across the unpoliced expanse of the internet. Therefore, you can now access bl1231.als.lbl.gov via the following URL:
The one annoyance of our newly implemented security is that your browser is going to complain every time you try to connect. If this is not annoying to you then read no further. If you’d like a remedy to the situation hit the jump…
Rumors abound of the demise of the SIBYLS beamline.
No worries fellow scientists the SIBYLS beamline is fully functional. Although the webpage has not been updated in a couple of months progress is being made on many fronts.
After an extended shutdown of the ALS for major upgrades to the injector and storgae rings we recieved our first “new” light on January 19th. Since then Greg has been working hard to get the SAXS endstation up and running for the upcoming SAXS users. During the shutdown Greg and Michal made many improvements and additions to both the hardware and software of the SAXS endstation. Maybe I can get Greg to give a little press release when he gets time.
I have also been working diligently on many improvements to the PX endstation including a major upgrade to the beamline operating software, installation of a sample automounting robot, new computers, updated linux releases, dual monitors for the user workstation (one for keeping and eye on data colelction and a second for performing/monitoring your data analysis).
Before the shutdown we were using BLU-ICE version 3.0; we are now using version 5.0. This new version, in addition to having numerous new whiz-bang features, also provides an easier path to future upgrades so we will not be left in the dust as development of BLU-ICE continues at the SSRL.
One of the key features of BLU-ICE 5.0 is the addition of a screening tab to allow automated screening of crystals in combination with the sample automounting system (the robot). Although the robot installation is still in progress the software to support it are almost entirely in place.
