This SBIR Phase I award provides funds to develop a software package for the processing of macromolecular diffraction data from electronic position-sensitive area detectors, with particular application to data from high-flux storage ring x-ray sources. Existing packages of software are either geared toward data from conventional laboratory x-ray sources or have been tested in a limited number of sites. The proposers' XENGEN software package has been widely used and tested and could be readily adapted to the high-flux, storage ring context. The research involves extending this package to allow it to handle more kinds of crystallographic data than it can currently handle, with particular attention to its application to storage-ring data. The extensions of the existing software must allow it to deal with new classes of statistical objects and with different types of experimental conditions. The research effort will consist of analyzing those new contexts, writing and documenting the new software, and testing the software in conventional contexts and with data from detectors at storage rings. The result will be a software package capable of handling diffraction data from conventional x-ray sources and from storage rings when used in monochromatic or multiple-wavelength modes; the types of area detectors for which the software could be used include multiwire proportional counters, SIT tube television detectors, and charge coupled device detectors. Genex intends to license and distribute the software to laboratories and regional facilities in the United States and abroad.
