Structural and functional biology and soft matter

Access to synchrotron radiation has revolutionised our understanding of biology, allowing the three-dimensional structure of large biomolecules to be analysed routinely. Samples of the proteins and assemblies of proteins, relevant to human health, may be very small and difficult to crystallise for diffraction experiments, but new beamlines with advanced detectors will allow techniques to be developed that do not require large crystals. Biomedical research is a key area, and the ESRF plans to offer a range of experimental resources that will permit living systems to be studied across all scales from single molecules to whole organs.

The Upgrade Programme will enable crystals such as those below to become amenable to single crystal structure studies using high intensity nanofocus beams.

Example: Microfocussing for soft-matter. For studies of biopolymer crystals, beam sizes down to 5 µm provide opportunities for replacing low resolution fibre diffraction by high resolution single crystal studies. This has already been demonstrated for α-amylose crystals (Popov D., Burghammer M., Buleon A., Montesanti N., Putaux J.L., Riekel C., Macromolecules 39, 3704-3706 (2006)).

Experiments in structural and functional biology

An integrated set of beamlines will employ macromolecular crystallography to look at the machinery of life at the atomic scale. Intense nano-focused beams will highlight and analyse complex assemblies of biological molecules, after screening thousands of minute crystals automatically for the best sample. These investigations will be able to detect molecular changes associated with disease in individual cells.

Applications

• Membrane proteins
• Drug design and delivery
• Biological molecular machines
• Gene expression
• Whole cells and viruses
• Plastics and complex soft materials