BCSB Represented at the ACA in Philly

Once again, the BCSB teamed up with several other groups at the ALS to host a booth at the ACA. It was great to hang out with our ALS colleagues and to see many of our users.        

We are very pleased to now have Daniil Prigozhin in the BCSB. He comes to us with a strong background in crystallography, both growing crystals and solving structures. He completed his PhD work with Dr. Tom Alber at UC Berkeley in 2014, then did a post-doc with Dr. Yorgo Modis at the University of Cambridge,…

Sadly, today was Charlie Eigenbrot’s last PRT meeting, since he is retiring from Genentech in June. We will miss him! (But we do hope we comes back to visit us periodically at the synchrotron)

Anthony installed the first pin base warmer on 5.0.2 today. We have to wait until the ALS has LN restored before we can test it. One thing to note: the people we spoke to at NE-CAT about their pin base warmer told us that it does not actually solve the icing issue completely. They still do see pins move on the goniometer after mounting. Hopefully the warmer will help a bit, though!

The BCSB is planning on starting a monthly User Forum to solicit feedback from users on the current and future use of the beamlines. We’d love to hear from you about the direction that the BCSB should be taking in terms of beamline upgrades, features, and general operations. If you are interested in participating in the forum, please contact Corie Ralston.

We measured the temperature at the sample during warming of the pin base, and preliminary tests so far show that the heat is not transferred to the loop during two minutes of base warming. Tests are continuing now to determine how well the warmer removes ice and frost from the bases.

Images of a crystal in a loop before and after using the pin base warmer: