Science | Armin Wagner

Armin Wagner
Long Wavelength MX

Armin Wagner Armin Wagner is Principal Beamline Scientist on the Beamline I23. After his PhD at Free University of Berlin in the field of charge density determinations from small molecules he worked as a post doc at the protein crystallography beamlines at the Swiss Light Source, Paul Scherrer Institute. His main research areas are radiation damage of protein crystals and structure determinations from protein microcrystals.

Email: Armin Wagner
Tel: +44 (0) 1235 778560
Beamline I23: Long Wavelength MX

Key Research Areas

Macromolecular crystallography, X-ray diffraction, radiation damage, microcrystals

Current Research Areas

Macromolecular crystallography has become the method of choice to deduce the atomic structure of proteins. In collaboration with Novo Nordisk, Denmark, I have determined the structure of Ultralente, a microcrystalline insulin preparation which has been in therapeutic use against diabetes mellitus for more than 50 years. The experiments were performed at the microfocus setup of beamline X06SA at the Swiss Light Source. Due to the small crystal size new mounting and handling techniques had to be investigated. My experiences from this project are being taken into consideration in the design of I24 to allow users to investigate structures from crystals as small as 5 microns. 

In a second project at the Swiss Light Source I performed experiments with the first prototype of the PILATUS pixel detector. This detector will allow continuous shutter free experiments without adding read-out noise to the diffraction data. First results were very promising and showed the high potential of such a detector for macromolecular crystallography.

In an ongoing collaboration with the Swiss Light Source I’m working on different aspects of radiation damage of macromolecular crystals. A systematic study on the effect of cryo cooling to a temperature of 15 K showed that radiation damage is reduced in comparison to 90 K. At Diamond I will extend these studies, as radiation damage will be one of the limiting factors for successful structure determinations on the MX beamlines.

Selected Publications

  1. Ch. Broennimann, E.F. Eikenberry, B. Henrich, R. Horisberger, G. Huelsen, E. Pohl, C. Schulze-Briese, M. Suzuki, T. Tomizaki, H. Toyokawa, A. Wagner (2006) The PILATUS 1M detector J. Synchrotron Rad. 13, 120-130.
  2. A. Wagner, M. Pieren, C. Schulze-Briese, K. Ballmer-Hofer & A. E. Prota (2006). Structure determination of VEGF-E by sulfur SAD. Acta Cryst. D62, 1430-1434.
  3. A. Meents, A. Wagner, R. Schneider, C. Pradervand, E. Pohl, C. Schulze-Briese (2007) Reduction of X-ray induced radiation damage of macromolecular crystals by data collection at 15K: a systematic study Acta Cryst. D63, 302-309.
  4. C. Schulze-Briese, A. Wagner, T. Tomizaki, M. Oetiker (2005) Beam-size effects in radiation damage in insulin and thaumatin crystals J. Synchrotron. Rad. 12, 261-267.
  5. P. Luger, A. Wagner, C.B. Huebschle, S.I. Troyanov (2005) Experimental advances for high-speed evaluations of electron densities J. Phys. Chem. A109, 10177-10179.