What did the Scientists Discover?

Our team has developed a new serial crystallography method for rapid serial data collection with oscillation, lowering the total number of crystals needed. Crystals are deposited onto a silicon chip with thousands of microwells in precise locations. Using a piezoelectric translation stage, each crystal-containing microwell can be positioned in front of the X-ray beam rapidly and precisely. With oscillation, the total amount of data per crystal that can be obtained is improved, without effects from radiation damage.

Before June 26th, Chris Budrow was a doctoral student at CHESS, working with his advisor Matt Miller. Now, he is Dr. Christopher Budrow.  

Macromolecular crystallography (MX) and biological small-angle X-ray solution scattering (BioSAXS) are two of the most important methods used to investigate the structure of macromolecules and efforts are underway at CHESS to establish two of the first beamlines worldwide optimized for high pressure MX and BioSAXS. Enthusiasm and interest in the field as well as the new X-ray techniques offered by CHESS were documented by the participation of more than 50 scientists in the workshop on “Biomolecules Under Pressure” which was part of the recent CHESS Users Meeting.

Supported by an NSF Grant to INCREASE and CHESS, the students came from University of Texas Río Grande Valley, Hampton University, Tuskegee University, Northeastern University, University of Texas at El Paso, PREM UMN-UTRGV, Jackson State University PREM, John Hopkins University, Morgan State University, University of the West Indies (UWI), University of Puerto Rico NSF-PREM: Center for Interfacial Electrochemistry (CIE²M), CHESS, and Cornell University.