Macromolecular Crystallography Expansion Project

The Macromolecular Crystallography Expansion Project has four strategic objectives to extend the capabilities of the existing crystallographic infrastructure at the Australian Synchrotron (AS) in order to meet key areas of growth and development in the crystallographic community. These strategic objectives are:

  • To increase the capabilities, capacity and performance of the MX beamlines at the AS.
  • To facilitate crystallography of membrane proteins, protein complexes and other challenging proteins.
  • To enable drug design by fragment-based screening.
  • To support synchrotron-based small-molecule crystallography (SMX).

In order to meet these strategic objectives five building projects are proposed:

  1. Upgrade the existing high-throughput beamline (MX1) to greatly increase its capabilities throughput, and improve its functionality for the SMX community.
  2. Upgrade the end-station and focusing optics of the existing microfocus beamline (MX2) to enhance flux, beam stability, performance and functionality for the SMX community.
  3. Undertake a comprehensive laboratory upgrade to produce a working structural biology lab at the AS with a set of fragment libraries for users and staff to use for screening experiments in conjunction with crystallization facilities such as those available at C3 and Monash.
  4. Build a new small angle scattering beamline for structural characterisation of biological molecules (BioSAXS).
  5. Build a new high performance macromolecular crystallography beamline (MX3) on a 3 m in-vacuum undulator source and 5x5 μm focus spot size for determination of structures from weakly diffracting micro crystals of large macromolecules and naturally occurring crystals.

The BioSAXS and MX3 projects are covered in detail in separate proposals and this project will describe the upgrades to the existing MX beamlines and building of a structural biology laboratory.

pdf document Download Full Project Proposal Here (pdf, 60kb)

Contact Tom Caradoc-Davies
Position: Principal Scientist, Macromolecular Crystallography
Phone: +61 (0)3 8540 4187
Fax: +61 (0)3 8540 4200
Email: Tom.Caradoc-Davies@synchrotron.org.au

Further Information