CORE--Crystallographic data collection at the Advanced Photon Source

University Of Md Biotechnology Institute, Baltimore MD

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Abstract

The aim of this core project is to acquire and process diffraction data effectively and efficiently at the facilities of the Industrial Macromolecular Crystallography Association Collaborative Access Team (IMCA-CAT) at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratry. Crystallographic data collection should not be a bottleneck in the process of solving structures and identifying the structural implications of multiple splicing sites in eukaryotic proteins. Data collection will not become a bottleneck as long as (a) procedures for collecting routine data are rendered efficient and fool-proof; (b) procedures for choosing peak and inflection-point energies for multiwavelength data collection are stable; (c) access to non-standard but useful multiwavelength or optimized-anomalous energies is available; and (d) procedures for processing the diffraction data are easy to use and can keep up with the data acquisition rate. At the IMCA-CAT facilities, these tasks are for the most part already accomplished for the level of throughput used in the current round of structural genomics projects. As the demand increases in the near future, we are moving to improve the facilities in all four ways in order to address that demand. Specifically, we intend to install a sample-loading robotics system on IMCA-CAT's insertion-device beamline, 17-ID, and make improvements in the monochromator, the visualization optics, and the collimation assembly on that beamline. On IMCA-CAT's bending-magnet beamline, 17-BM, we plan the installation of a collimating mirror that should provide a better than twofold improvement in signal-to-noise ratios. As the multiple-splicing project proceeds,we will provide a site for effective data acquisition and processing, and make steady improvements in the facilities. The multiple-splicing project and IMCA-CAT's primary constituency of pharmaceutical users will benefit from one another's advancements.