Publications | Diamond News Spring 2009

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Update on I24

In the last edition of Diamond News, the Microfocus Macromolecular Crystallography beamline, I24 had just come online. With a beam size of 5-500 μm, I24 is dedicated to working on crystals of biological macromolecules that have previously been considered too small to be used for X-ray diffraction experiments on the other macromolecular crystallography beamlines. Gwyndaf Evans, Principal Beamline Scientist, says, “We have only had about 10 user groups in so far as we have been optimising the beamline, but it has been a really exciting period for us as we are already seeing the potential of the microfocus beamline being realised. Response from the users who have got beamtime has also been extremely positive.”

One user who has taken advantage of the potential of I24 to study tiny crystals is Prof. Stephen Curry of Imperial College London who was looking at the 3C protease from foot-and-mouth disease virus. In the past they have solved the structure for the 3C protease from a different strain of the virus, and wanted to examine the difference between strains.

“We don’t anticipate big structural changes but we’d like to see them to be sure. It will give us a better understanding of the degree of structural variation between the proteases from different strains. It may help future efforts to design drugs that inhibit the protease which — unlike strain-specific vaccines — could be effective against all seven serotypes of foot-and-mouth disease virus.”

Prof Stephen Curry, Imperial College London

Dr Gwyndaf Evans in the Storage Ring

Dr Gwyndaf Evans in Diamond's Storage Ring

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