Rejuvenation of X-ray data collection facilites at the Institute of Structural Molecular Biology at Birkbeck/UCL

蛋白质X射线结晶学包括向由高纯度蛋白质制成的晶体照射一束强烈的X射线。少量的X射线被晶体散射，根据散射模式，可以计算出原子在蛋白质中的位置，这就告诉我们蛋白质是什么样子的。这些信息对了解蛋白质的工作原理非常有用，也是设计结合和改变蛋白质活性的药物的重要方法。有两种类型的X射线源，一种是产生最亮X射线束的国家或国际设施的同步加速器，另一种是设在大学实验室的X射线发生器。英国刚刚完成了一个新的同步加速器，名为Didcot附近的钻石。然而，研究人员可能每隔几个月才能进入这些设施，尽管他们可以收集大量数据，但这可能意味着对下一组实验室实验的反馈可能会很慢。因此，重要的是在大学实验室有一个不那么强烈的震源，在那里可以对晶体进行初步表征，在某些情况下可以收集整个数据集，以便更快地反馈到下一组实验。我们想买一台功率更大的X射线发生器，在大学校园里使用。这将使我们能够在不使用同步加速器的情况下筛选更具挑战性的问题的晶体，并收集关于更广泛蛋白质的数据集，我们正在研究这些蛋白质作为潜在的药物靶标，要么用于我们的学术工作，要么与家乡县地区的小公司合作。

Protein X-ray crystallography consists of shining an intense beam of X-rays at crystals made from a highly pure protein. A small amount of the X-rays are scattered by the crystals and from the scattering pattern, the position of the atoms in the protein can be worked out, and this tells us what the protein looks like. This information is very useful in understanding how the proteins work and is an important method of being able to design drugs that will bind and alter the activity of the protein. There are two types of X-ray source, a synchrotron which is a national or international facility which produces the brightest X-ray beams and an X-ray generator which is based in the university laboratory. The UK is just completing a new synchrotron called Diamond near Didcot. However researchers only get access to these facilities perhaps every couple of months and although they can collect a huge amount of data, it can mean that the feedback to the next set of laboratory experiments can be slow. It is therefore important to have a less intense source in the university laboratory where preliminary characterisation of the crystals can be done and in some cases whole data sets can be collected allowing more rapid feedback to the next set of experiments. We wish to buy a more powerful X-ray generator for use on the university campus. This will allow us to screen crystals of more challenging problems without going to a synchrotron and to collect datasets on a wider range of proteins that we are studying as potential drug targets either for our academic work or in collaboration with small companies in the home counties area.