The Berkeley Center for Structural Biology (BCSB) is a national user facility operating under the aegis of LBNL’s Physical Biosciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. An umbrella organization, the BCSB operates five protein crystallography beamlines at the Advanced Light Source (ALS).

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User Training Sessions

Users can familiarize themselves with recent improvements in data acquisition software and remote access protocols on 'tutorial' days. The first staff day of every month on beamline 5.0.1 (Se-SAD) has been booked specifically for these operations. Please contact Peter Zwart for more information.

Recent Scientific Highlights

Crystal structure of sodium galactose transpoter. Using data collected at beamline 5.0.2, researchers at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA have solved the structure of a class of proteins known as sodium glucose co-transporters (SGLTs), which pump glucose into cells. These transport proteins are used in the treatment of chronic diarrhea, saving the lives of millions of children each year, Oral Rehydration Therapy.

Auxin regulatory mechanism revealed. Researchers at the University of Washington shed light on the mechanism of growth regulation by plant hormone Auxin. Using data obtained from beamlines 5.0.2, 8.2.1 and 8.2.2, they found that auxin plays a key role in marking certain protein substrates for destruction.

Architecture of a Nuclear Pore. Hoelz and coworkers recently solved the crystal structure of a segment of a nuclear pore complex at beamlines 8.2.1 and 8.2.2; the structure led to a model for how all the pore proteins fit together. Although the segment is part of a heptamer, it crystallizes as a hetero-octamer in two independent crystal forms as well as in solution. The model proposes that the hetero-octamer forms a curved vertical rod that connects four horizontally stacked rings, forming a cylindrical pore.

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Beam line updates

Sector 5

Optics upgrade of sector 5 beam lines make 5.0.2 one of the brightest PX beam lines on the west coast. A new set of mirrors has increased the number of collimated photons around the critical energy on 5.0.2 by roughly by factor of 20. 5.0.2 now has a usable wavelength range from 6 to 16 keV, allowing longer-wavelength S-SAD, as well as Br and Rb MAD experiments to be performed.

Sector 8

The BCSB is midway through a two-year upgrade to Beamlines 8.2.1 and 8.2.2, the two superbend beamlines, of the five macromolecular crystallography beamlines, operated by the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology (BCSB). The improvements are designed to allow screening of, and data collection from, small crystals and will help resolve structures of large complexes. Rigaku ACTOR robots have been installed on both beamlines 8.2.1 and 8.2.2, and are now available for use both locally and remotely. In addition, a microdiffractometer system (MD2) has been installed on 8.2.1. Beamline optics upgrades to 8.2.1 are scheduled for 2009, with the M2 mirror replacement scheduled for June of 2009.