Advances in synchrotron X-ray diffraction methods as a basis for new and improved tools in structural biology
Event details
| Date | 08.03.2010 |
| Hour | 10:00 |
| Speaker | Prof. Marc Schiltz, EPFL SB IPSB LCR |
| Location |
CE 5 - Centre Est
|
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Macromolecular X-ray crystallography has dramatically changed since the pioneering work of Max Perutz. Among the many significant advances that had an impact on structural biology, the advent of synchrotron radiation sources is perhaps the single most important event that has transformed the field and opened up completely new perspectives. While the high brilliance and the spectral characteristics of synchrotron radiation have played a crucial role in the evolution that macromolecular crystallography has undergone over the past two decades, other remarkable properties of synchrotron radiation, such as the transverse polarisation and the spatial coherence have, up to now, remained largely unexploited in macromolecular crystallography. I will present the outcome and prospective of our research projects in X-ray diffraction methods that are directed towards addressing some of the new challenges that have arisen in synchrotron-based structural biology. The move towards ever smaller samples and more intense X-ray beams has now led to the situation where radiation damage has become the major limiting factor for most experiments and imposes severe constraints on the minimal sample size and lifetime. Under these circumstances, it becomes of the outmost importance to be able to extract the maximum amount of information from X-ray diffraction experiments. This can be achieved by making active use of the polarisation (through resonant scattering effects) and coherence properties of the radiation produced by synchrotrons and at future XFEL sources. I will also present new methods that aim at exploiting hitherto inaccessible intensity information by enlarging the range of samples that can be used in X-ray diffraction analysis to include polycrystalline samples and/or nanocrystals.
Practical information
- General public
- Free