Work

The New Macromolecular Femtosecond Crystallography (MFX) Instrument at LCLS

Year: 2016

Type: article

Abstract: Macromolecular X-ray crystallography has developed, since its first use over 50 years ago to solve the structure of myoglobin, into a widely used method with broad impact in biological sciences and in society. It is today the primary technique used to obtain structural information on biomolecules that can shed light on their function and this information is often used in biomedical applications such as drug design. As this article is written, the Protein Data Bank [1 F.C. Bernstein, Journal of Molecular Biology 112(3), 535–542 (1977).[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]] has just reached the milestone of 100,000 deposited X-ray structures, with a continuing trend for an ever-increasing number of structures every year. The primary contribution to this success and the increasing number of X-ray structures is the broad availability of synchrotron radiation sources with many dedicated beamlines around the world providing rapid and efficient data collection along with standard data analysis tools capable of fast data interpretation.

Source: Synchrotron Radiation News

DOI: 10.1080/08940886.2016.1124681

Authors: Sébastien Boutet, Aina E. Cohen, Soichi Wakatsuki

Institutions: SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Linac Coherent Light Source, Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, Stanford Medicine, Stanford University

Language: English

Topic: Enzyme Structure and Function

Subfield: Materials Chemistry

Field: Materials Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: green

Funders: U.S. Department of Energy, National Institutes of Health, Directorate for Biological Sciences, National Institute of General Medical Sciences

Awards: G2300450775, G303061748, A Synchrotron Radiation Structural Biology Resource