Training in advanced experimental techniques
The Diamond Light Source Macromolecular Crystallography group would like to invite both our academic and industrial users to the Beyond automation: Back to the MX beamlines on-site training session on Wednesday 30 September and Thursday 1 October 2026.
MX on-site training is changing - we now offer different training events aimed at different experience levels of ussers of the Diamond MX beamlines and their experimental needs. If you are a new user to Diamond MX, we also offer an Introduction to Diamond MX training event (the next will be in February 2027) and for advanced experiments we offer Going Further in MX: Advanced Experiments at Diamond (June 2027).
The aim of this event is to provide established Diamond MX users, particularly those who are predominantly users of unattended data collection (UDC) or those that have used our beamlines remotely, greater awareness of all the tools our beamlines offer. These sessions will focus on best practices for sample preparation, data collection using our high-throughput beamlines, as well as data processing while demonstrating many tips, tricks and applied case studies.
Please apply for this event at the link above. Places are limited to 25 participants. Applications are now open and will close at 12:00 (UTC) on Monday 24 August 2026. All applicants will be informed about the outcome of their application shortly after this date.
This event is free of charge and includes lunch on 30 September and 1 October as well as accommodation and dinner for the night of 30 September. Reasonable travelling expenses within the UK will also be provided. We may provide an additional night of accommodation on request if travel necessitates this.
The programme starts at 10:30 on 30 September and finishes at 15:00 on 1 October.
A brief summary of the sessions can be found below:
Challenging Samples (MX Crystallization Facility, Membrane Protein Laboratory)
This session will showcase the peripheral facilities for sample preparation for MX at Diamond which is important in obtaining the best quality sample before a diffraction experiment.
The tools available within the crystallisation facility and the Membrane Protein Laboratory (MPL) will be demonstrated with an opportunity for participants to setup their own crystallisation plates for submission to VMXi and prepare membrane protein samples for lipid cubic phase (LCP) crystallisation.
Data Interpretation (MX Data Analysis group)
Automatic processing provides a powerful starting point, but obtaining the best possible structure often requires going beyond these pipelines. This can be particularly important when investigating subtle structural features that underpin important biological questions. This session will showcase the tools available at Diamond to evaluate and compare data collections, improve data quality through advanced reprocessing, and utilise multi-crystal experiment workflows. We will also highlight recent developments in downstream analysis tools, helping users maximise the structural insight that can be extracted from their experiments.
Beyond Defaults: Mastering Dose, Multi-Axis and Beam Delivery on I04
While Unattended Data Collection (UDC) is highly efficient for standard samples, getting the absolute best data from challenging crystals requires taking active control of your experiment. This hands-on session focuses on moving beyond default parameters to master radiation dose and beam delivery. Participants will explore advanced, user-selected case studies tailored to their specific research challenges. Topics include preventing hidden detector saturation on highly diffracting samples, matching beam morphology to crystal size to minimize background scatter, using multi-axis goniometry to overcome blind zones in low-symmetry space groups, and deploying advanced helical trajectories to safely spread dose across needle crystals.
Getting the most out of difficult crystals on I24
Small crystals, needles, thin plates, or non-uniform crystals with poorly diffracting regions are often discarded as low diffraction quality crystals. We would encourage you to keep and test them with the approaches available on I24. In these practical sessions, we will focus on multi-crystal data collection strategies, both at cryogenic and room temperatures, showcasing how to successfully obtain a full dataset from more challenging crystal targets. Users will practise identifying multiple micro-crystals on a single pin (meshes) and queuing small collection sweeps. There will also be training on mounting the same sample on thin films for room temperature data collection. We will discuss optimizing sample preparation for this approach and examine the auto-generated output of xia2.multiplex to progressively merge sweeps into a complete dataset
Next Frontiers in X-ray crystallography (VMXm, I23, XChem, XFEL-Hub)
Diamond offers several specialised beamlines and tools to further explore proteins and their functions, either through observing motions or chemistry available via the XFEL-hub, the binding of metals using I23 and fragment screening for drug discovery at the XChem facility. Difficult to crystallise samples that only produce very small crystals can be fully exploited by VMXm. This session will include a tour of these advanced facilities from the respective beamline and facility staff.
For any queries please contact:
Diamond Light Source is the UK's national synchrotron science facility, located at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire.
Diamond Light Source Ltd
Diamond House
Harwell Science & Innovation Campus
Didcot
Oxfordshire
OX11 0DE
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