WORKSHOP ON SMALL-ANGLE X-RAY SCATTERING AND DIFFRACTION STUDIES IN STRUCTURAL B

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. The SSRL SMB bio-SAXS/D team hosted a practical workshop during July 28-30, 2006. The late July dates were chosen in order to include 6 beam time shifts of hands-on experimental tutorial sessions, complementing the last bio-SAXS/D workshop in October 2005. The first half of the workshop had oral presentations by invited expert speakers on mostly non-crystalline x-ray diffraction studies in structural biology, ranging from fundamentals of bio-SAXS/D techniques to cutting-edge advanced applications conducted at SSRL and elsewhere. These talks covered a comprehensive review of the structural biology research by SAXS/D techniques, interplay between small angle scattering and macromolecular crystallography, nucleic acid structures, virus maturation kinetics, a modeling approach based on atomic structures, membrane systems, the use of neutron scattering to complement x-ray studies, as well as a review of the SSRL SMB program and future prospect of SMB research using LCLS. Bio-SAXS/D staff discussed BL4-2 developments, practical issues in bio-SAXS/D experiments and software developments for data collection and processing. The second half of the workshop was devoted to two half-day computational sessions and experimental tutorial sessions. The computational practical sessions were given by Dmitri Svergun (EMBL-Hamburg), whose group has developed a number of powerful computational tools for solution scattering. Selected participants were given the opportunity to measure their own samples within a couple of hours of individually allocated beam time on BL4-2, and many managed to obtain encouraging results. These practical sessions were enthusiastically received by the participants, who engaged in active discussion with speakers and staff on practical issues in bio-SAXS/D studies. Some of the workshop participants have recently submitted Rapid Access or regular experimental proposals.