Facilities for macromolecular crystallography at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin

Journal Article · Tue Mar 20 00:00:00 EDT 2012 · Journal of Synchrotron Radiation

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1107/S0909049512006395· OSTI ID:1229080

Mueller, Uwe ^[1]; Darowski, Nora ^[1]; Fuchs, Martin R. ^[2]; Förster, Ronald ^[3]; Hellmig, Michael ^[1]; Paithankar, Karthik S. ^[1]; Pühringer, Sandra ^[3]; Steffien, Michael ^[1]; Zocher, Georg ^[4]; Weiss, Manfred S. ^[1]

---

1. Inst. for Soft Matter and Functional Materials, Berlin (Germany)
2. Paul Scherrer Inst. (PSI), Villigen (Switzerland). Swiss Light Source
3. Freie Univ., Berlin (Germany)
4. Univ. of Tubingen (Germany)

Three macromolecular crystallography (MX) beamlines at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) are available for the regional, national and international structural biology user community. The state-of-the-art synchrotron beamlines for MX BL14.1, BL14.2 and BL14.3 are located within the low-[beta] section of the BESSY II electron storage ring. All beamlines are fed from a superconducting 7 T wavelength-shifter insertion device. BL14.1 and BL14.2 are energy tunable in the range 5-16 keV, while BL14.3 is a fixed-energy side station operated at 13.8 keV. All beamlines are equipped with CCD detectors. BL14.1 and BL14.2 are in regular user operation providing about 200 beam days per year and about 600 user shifts to approximately 50 research groups across Europe. BL14.3 has initially been used as a test facility and was brought into regular user mode operation during the year 2010. BL14.1 has recently been upgraded with a microdiffractometer including a mini-[kappa] goniometer and an automated sample changer. Other user facilities include office space adjacent to the beamlines, a sample preparation laboratory, a biology laboratory (safety level 1) and high-end computing resources. In this article the instrumentation of the beamlines is described, and a summary of the experimental possibilities of the beamlines and the provided ancillary equipment for the user community is given.

• Research Organization: Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES)
• DOE Contract Number: SC00112704
• OSTI ID: 1229080
• Report Number(s): BNL-111155-2015-JA; JSYRES
• Journal Information: Journal of Synchrotron Radiation, Vol. 19, Issue 3; ISSN 0909-0495
• Publisher: International Union of Crystallography
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS
macromolecular crystallography beamlines
high-throughput methods
crystal dehydration
UV radiation-damage-induced phasing
long-wavelength phasing