In case anyone here did not hear about our upcoming session on
microcrystallography, here is some information.
Please note that the ACA has extended the deadline for abstract
submission to April 1. We are still in the process of choosing final
speakers, so if you have interesting science or engineering with
small crystals, we would love to hear from you. The official link is
www.biochem.utah.edu/aca2007/abstracts.html
Session 13.08. (Gerd Rosenbaum & Richard Gillilan, organizers).
Weds July 25, 2007 morning, (Salt Lake City, Utah)
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"Micro-Crystals, Micro-Beams, and Multiple Crystals"
The aim of the session is to give crystallographers an account of the
present state and experience with macromolecular microcrystallography
at synchrotron radiation beamlines. The session will cover three
topics: (i) x-ray optics for microfocused beams, (ii) endstation
instrumentation for microcrystals and data acquisition and processing
methods for multiple crystals, and (iii) scientific advances made
possible with microcrystals. X-ray optics will cover methods of
focusing high flux beams to focal sizes of 2-15 µm on the sample,
beam stabilization, and reduction of instrumental scatter background.
The 2nd topic, endstation instrumentation, will cover recognition of
micrometer size samples and centering them to the microfocused beam,
goniostat stability, reduction of scatter, and detectors with high
detective quantum efficiency at very small intensities of diffraction
peaks. Also invited are reports on improved software to efficiently
achieve high completeness with the minimum number of multiple
crystals, radiation damage compensation, and merging data from
multiple crystals into a complete data sets. The 3rd topic,
scientific advances with microcrystals, will cover scientific
advances which were possible only with microcrystals, either because
larger crystals were not obtainable even with great effort, or larger
crystals didn't have the diffractive quality to solve the structure.
BioMacromolecules and Synchroton Radiation SIG
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Also, feel free to contact me personally if you are interested or
have suggestions.
Richard Gillilan
MacCHESS
Cornell University
Ithaca NY
