ALBA synchrotron radiation facility
Barcelona, Spain
Description
ALBA, the largest scientific facility in Spain, is a synchrotron radiation facility operated by the Consortium CELLS, which is equally funded by the Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economía y Competividad) and the Catalan Government (Departament d'Economia i Coneixement). ALBA consists of a complex of electron accelerators that generate brilliant X-ray photon beams. Out of the seven beamlines that exploit the X-ray beam, BL13-XALOC is the only one dedicated to Macromolecular X-ray Crystallography (MX), which aims to resolve the atomic structure of macromolecules. XALOC is equipped with state-of-the-art optics and end-station instrumentation including a high accuracy diffractometer and a photon-counting 6-Mpixel detector. The beamline started user operation in 2012, and is currently performing high-quality X-ray crystallography data collections from macromolecular crystals. The Spanish Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) is in charge to protect the workers, the public and the environment against the harmful effects of ionizing radiation, such as X rays. The CSN, in the framework of its research program on the effects of ionizing radiation, and Alba Synchrotron are offering a PhD position on radiation damage on biological macromolecules. The work includes a relevant collaboration with the Laboratorio de Estudios Cristalográficos (LEC, IACT, CSIC-U.Granada) and the University of Almería, both having a well proved experience in protein production, crystallization and resolution of crystallographic structures. Alba is offering a Master program on Synchrotron radiation together with nearby UAB university and LEC is offering a Master in Crystallography and Crystallisation (MCC) of the Official UIMP/CSIC Posgraduate Program. A major limiting factor of MX experiments in synchrotrons is the damage induced by radiation absorbed by the macromolecular crystal. The damage is relevant if the crystal is cryogenically cooled, and is even worse at room temperature, a condition that is required by promising techniques such as microfluidics devices (microchips or capillaries). This PhD position aims to study different and complementary approaches to reduce the radiation damage on these crystals: use of novel scavengers based on fullerene structures, and the use of X-ray beams whose dimensions are matched to the crystal size to spread the radiation onto the whole crystal volume. Other approaches may also be studied. These strategies will be evaluated at XALOC beamline using a number of different model proteins with different radiation hardness (ubiquitin, GST, ?-spectrin SH3 domains, etc). During his/her PhD, the successful candidate will be involved in:
- Purification and crystallization of proteins and the protein-ligands complexes to be studied.
- X-ray characterization of protein crystals produced under different physico-chemical conditions (pH, scavengers, etc) and difracted tuning beam size, dose, temperature, etc.
- To assess the radiation damage induced by the synchrotron radiation on macromolecular crystals through validated methods and tests.
- Provide and check new data collection strategies to be implemented in XALOC beamline.
