The BioCAT Biotechnology Research Resource operates X-ray beamline 181D at the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory. Now in its 16th year of operation, it is a mature, productive facility with many capabilities unique in the USA, and, arguably, the world. Going forward, we intend to maintain our world-class capabilities in static and time resolved fiber diffraction and small-angle scattering (SAXS) from macromolecules in solution with new emphases on extending SAXS to faster time domains that use less material, and fiber diffraction to smaller spatial domains with wider options on beam sizes, Q ranges and divergences. The BioCAT X-ray florescence microprobe will be made even more efficient and integrated with micro-diffraction mapping, phase contrast and (light) florescence imaging for experiments with substantially more information content. Combining techniques have the potential to greatly accelerate the progress of these types of investigations by making a serial process parallel. A central thread of all core projects will be integrating them with the GDA beamline control environment, developed at the DIAMOND Light Source and adapted here to 18 ID, which will provide a common interface to all experiments and provide advanced support for time resolved experiments. It provides the NeXus file system for efficient handling of very large multidimensional data sets as well as facilitating data archiving and future data mining. Efforts to mitigate radiation damage and a new modeling effort will enhance the validity and information content of muscle diffraction studies. Our Driving Biomedical Projects and collaborative and service projects have relevance to basic mechanisms of muscle function, protein and RNA folding, heart disease, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. Our proposed training activities are designed to provide users with information and virtual experiences so that they are prepared for their visits and make effective use of the resource. Our proposed dissemination activities are designed to ensure that the scientific community is well-informed of resource capabilities.
The Biophysics Collaborative Access Team uses intense X-ray beams from the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory to perform basic biomedical research on non-crystalline biological materials. Results of this research are expected to be relevant to heart disease, arthritis, cancer, and protein misfolding diseases such as Alzheimer's and ALS.
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