Abstract
April 26, 2006
Cornell University Biophysics Colloquium
700 Clark Hall, 4:30 pm

“New Opportunities for Structural Biology with Cornell's Energy Recovery Linac”

Richard Gillilan
Staff Scientist
MacCHESS
Cornell University
Website

The Energy Recovery Linac (ERL) is a novel synchrotron x-ray source planned as an upgrade to CHESS in a few years. It utilizes superconducting linac technology to create x-ray beams several orders of magnitude more powerful than is possible with existing storage ring sources. Capabilities will include generating fully coherent beams, nanometer-sized probe beams, and x-ray pulses with durations of 100 - 1000 femtoseconds.

What new opportunities will this create for biology? Presently macromolecular crystallography is, by far, the major biological application for synchrotron radiation. Since the late 1980's atomic coordinates of biomolecules derived from synchrotron-based crystallography have been appearing at an exponentially increasing rate. While a far wider range of crystalline samples will yield data on the ERL (smaller crystals, larger complexes), the unique properties of the beam will enable new methods. Techniques such as x-ray microscopy, scanning nanoprobes, and coherent imaging will not require crystalline samples and will be suitable for examination of subcellular structures, gels, and molecules in solution. Sub-picosecond x-ray pulses will permit examination of biomolecular dynamics of proteins and chemical processes on natural time-scales. The talk will conclude with a preview of some of the exciting new methods being proposed by researchers presenting at our upcoming 2-day workshop: Frontier Applications of X-Ray Science in Biology with an ERL X-ray Source (June 21-22, 2006).


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