Recent advances on the MX2 crystallography beamline at the Australian Synchrotron — ASN Events
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  2. Session Twelve - Poster Session D including Happy Hour & Trade Display
  3. Recent advances on the MX2 crystallography beamline at the Australian Synchrotron

Recent advances on the MX2 crystallography beamline at the Australian Synchrotron (#421)

David Aragao 1 , Hima Cherukuvada 1 , Daniel Eriksson 1 , Stephen Darrop 1 , Robert Clarken 1 , Alan Easdon 1 , Tom Caradoc-Davies 1
  1. Australian Synchrotron, Clayton, VIC, Australia

MX2 is an in-vacuum undulator based crystallography beamline at the 3 GeV Australian Synchrotron. The beamline delivers hard x-rays in the energy range from 5.5 - 21 KeV to a focal spot at the sample position of ~15 microns FWHM. At 13 KeV the flux at the sample is typically 2.0 x 10^12 ph/sec. This beamline is ideal for weakly-diffracting, hard-to-crystallise proteins, viruses, protein assemblies and nucleic acids as well as smaller molecules such as inorganic catalysts and organic drug molecules. However, as a decrease in beam size generally has positive effect on smaller crystals or disordered larger crystals [1] the beam vibration can have an affect in beam position with consequent decrease in data quality [2]. These considerations are particularly true for small crystals such as from GPCRs or grown by the lipidic cubic phase methodologies where wedges of data from multiple crystals is required to build a complete set of data [3-5]. A description and analysis of the recent developments and optics upgrades to improve data quality on MX2 is presented.  

  1. R. Sanishvili, V. Nagarajan, D. Yoder, M. Becker, S. Xu, S. Corcoran, D. L. Akey, J. L. Smith and R. F. Fischetti. "A 7 µm mini-beam improves diffraction data from small or imperfect crystals of macromolecules" Acta Cryst. (2008). D64, 425-435
  2. D. Flot, T. Mairs, T. Giraud, M. Guijarro, M. Lesourd, V. Rey, D. van Brussel, C. Morawe, C. Borel, O. Hignette, J. Chavanne, D. Nurizzo, S. McSweeney and E. Mitchell "The ID23-2 structural biology microfocus beamline at the ESRF" J. Synchrotron Rad. (2010). 17, 107-118
  3. Li D1, Lyons JA, Pye VE, Vogeley L, Aragão D, Kenyon CP, Shah ST, Doherty C, Aherne M, Caffrey M. "Crystal structure of the integral membrane diacylglycerol kinase." Nature. (2013). 497, 521-4.
  4. Lyons JA1, Aragão D, Slattery O, Pisliakov AV, Soulimane T, Caffrey M. "Structural insights into electron transfer in caa3-type cytochrome oxidase." Nature. (2012) 487, 514-8.
  5. Rosenbaum DM1, Zhang C, Lyons JA, Holl R, Aragao D, Arlow DH, Rasmussen SG, Choi HJ, Devree BT, Sunahara RK, Chae PS, Gellman SH, Dror RO, Shaw DE, Weis WI, Caffrey M, Gmeiner P, Kobilka BK. "Structure and function of an irreversible agonist-β(2) adrenoceptor complex". Nature. (2011 ) 469, 236-40