Science Highlights & News

April 2012
Direct Observation of Cooperative Protein Structural Dynamics of Homodimeric Hemoglobin from 100 ps to 10 ms with Pump-Probe X-ray Solution Scattering
Kyung Hwan Kim, Srinivasan Muniyappan, Key Young Oang, Jong Goo Kim, Shunsuke Nozawa, Tokushi Sato, Shin-ya Koshihara, Robert Henning, Irina Kosheleva, Hosung Ki, Youngmin Kim, Tae Wu Kim, Jeongho Kim, Shin-ichi Adachi, and Hyotcherl Ihee
Journal of the American Chemical Society. (2012). 134 (16), 7001-7008
doi: 10.1021/ja210856v.

Proteins serve as molecular machines in performing their biological functions, but the detailed structural transitions are difficult to observe in their native aqueous environments in real time. For example, despite extensive studies, the solution-phase structures of the intermediates along the allosteric pathways for the transitions between the relaxed (R) and tense (T) forms have been elusive. In this work, we employed picosecond X-ray solution scattering and novel structural analysis to track the details of the structural dynamics of wild-type homodimeric hemoglobin (HbI) from the clam Scapharca inaequivalvis and its F97Y mutant over a wide time range from 100 ps to 56.2 ms. From kinetic analysis of the measured time-resolved X-ray solution scattering data, we identified three structurally distinct intermediates (I1, I2, and I3) and their kinetic pathways common for both the wild type and the mutant.

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Facility News

November 2011
Moffat Appointed Senior Advisor for Life Sciences at the APS

Moffat

The Advanced Photon Source (APS) is the Western Hemisphere’s most powerful source of x-rays for research. It attracts more than 4,000 users from academia, industry, and government laboratories around the world each year for research in all fields of science. In particular, almost half of the user community is in the life sciences area. The appointment of a Senior Advisor for Life Sciences at the APS (SALSA) to provide a stronger linkage with the life sciences community has been recommended by APS review committees and has been a priority for APS management. Furthermore, ongoing preparations for a major upgrade to the APS require strategic decisions that will benefit from the advice provided by an expert in this field. Following the recommendation of a search committee composed of APS management and users, I am pleased to announce the appointment of Prof. Keith Moffat of the University of Chicago to this position.

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BioCARS is a national user facility for synchrotron-based static and dynamic studies of biological macromolecules, located at Sector 14 of the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory. BioCARS is an integral part of the multi-institutional and multi-disciplinary Center for Advanced Radiation Sources (CARS) at the University of Chicago.

Bio feature

The mission of BioCARS is to develop state-of-the-art facilities and provide scientific and technical expertise and user support for studies of static and dynamic properties of macromolecules by X-ray scattering techniques such as static and time-resolved crystallography, SAXS/WAXS and fiber diffraction. The goal of research conducted at BioCARS is to understand basic biological processes in structural and dynamic terms, at the atomic resolution level. Scientific problems addressed by BioCARS users and staff are fundamental to basic science, highly relevant to significant biomedical problems and of great practical importance to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.

BioCARS operates two experimental stations, embedded in a Biosafety Level 3 (BSL-3) facility. This BSL-3 synchrotron-based capability is unique in the United States and permits safe studies of biohazardous materials, such as pathogenic human viruses.

BioCARS: a synchrotron resource for time-resolved X-ray science
Graber et al, J. Synchrotron Rad. 18, 658-670 (2011).

More about BioCARS: Facility and Scientific Mission › (PDF)

Time-resolved crystallography: past, present and future › (PDF)

 

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Note: BioCARS uses the APS scheduling system for scheduling user beamtime. To submit the trip information for your scheduled beamtime, please follow the links in your beamtime notification or ESAF reminder e-mails or login to the APS scheduling system.

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BioCARS is supported by grants from the National Center for Research Resources(grant 5P41RR007707) and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (grant 8P41GM103543) from the National Institutes of Health.