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

蛋白质X射线晶体学是用一束强烈的X射线照射由高纯度蛋白质制成的晶体。少量的X射线被晶体散射，从散射模式中，可以计算出蛋白质中原子的位置，这告诉我们蛋白质的样子。这些信息对于理解蛋白质如何工作非常有用，并且是能够设计将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，一种是同步加速器，它是一个国家或国际设施，产生最明亮的X射线束，另一种是位于大学实验室的X射线发生器。英国刚刚在迪科附近完成了一个名为钻石的新同步加速器。然而，研究人员可能每隔几个月才能访问这些设施，尽管他们可以收集大量数据，但这可能意味着下一组实验室实验的反馈可能很慢。因此，重要的是在大学实验室中有一个强度较低的源，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，以便更快地反馈给下一组实验。我们想买一台功率更大的X射线发生器供大学校园使用。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问题的晶体，并收集我们正在研究的更广泛蛋白质的数据集，这些蛋白质作为我们的学术工作或与家乡地区的小公司合作的潜在药物靶点。

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.