News

X-ray beam from the insertion device in Sector 4.

X-ray beam on the Sector 2B Side Bounce Diamonds, June 19, 2019.

The 2019 CHESS Users Meeting for the first time broke the 200 mark with 225 registered participants attending the plenary sessions and two hand-on workshops focusing on Synchrotron Essentials and Biomolecules Under Pressure. A complete meeting report will be published in the September 2019 issue of Synchrotron Radiation News.

As antibiotic resistance rises, the search for new antibiotic strategies has become imperative. In 2013, the Centers for Disease Control estimated that antibiotic resistant bacteria cause at least 2 million infections and 23,000 deaths a year in the U.S.; a recent report raised the likely mortality rate to 162,044.

There is growing interest in the biological research community to characterize and understand the impact of high pressures, i.e. 100s of MPa, on the physical properties and function of biological macromolecules, e.g. proteins, viruses, lipids etc.

In one of the first commissioning experiments since the upgrade of the facility, the team of Aaron Finke and collaborators measured the first crystal structure at CHESS beamline ID7B2.  The beamline provided excellent quality data and a good refined structure from a fluoroacetate dehalogenase crystal was obtained as shown below. Further commissioning is underway. Even at this early stage, ID7B2 is definitely geared up to be a world-class beamline.

The Scientific Reports article on "Recovery of Degraded-Beyond-Recognition 19th Century Daguerreotypes with Rapid High Dynamic Range Elemental X-ray Fluorescence Imaging of Mercury L Emission" with X-ray fluorescence imaging at CHESS was identified to be among the top 100 highly accessed articles in Scientific Reports in 2018.  Congratulations to the authors!

On June 4 - 5, 2019, students from several PREM groups and the INCREASE consortium participated in the CHESS User’s Meeting and the associated “Synchrotron Essentials” workshop.