Engineering topics

Aepfelbacher, Martin

Publications and source records attributed to Aepfelbacher, Martin.

2 records

DOE OSTI2022

Rapid and efficient room-temperature serial synchrotron crystallography using the CFEL TapeDrive

Serial crystallography at conventional synchrotron light sources (SSX) offers the possibility to routinely collect data at room temperature using micrometre-sized crystals of biological macromolecules. However, SSX data collection is not yet as routine and currently takes significantly longer than the standard rotation series cryo-crystallography. Thus, its use for high-throughput approaches, such as fragment-based drug screening, where the possibility to measure at physiological temperatures would be a great benefit, is impaired. On the way to highthroughput SSX using a conveyor belt based sample delivery system – the CFEL TapeDrive – with three different proteins of biological relevance (Klebsiella pneumoniae CTX-M-14 β-lactamase, Nectria haematococca xylanase GH11 and Aspergillus flavus urate oxidase), it is shown here that complete datasets can be collected in less than a minute and only minimal amounts of sample are required.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2018

Megahertz serial crystallography

Here, the new European X-ray Free-Electron Laser is the first X-ray free-electron laser capable of delivering X-ray pulses with a megahertz inter-pulse spacing, more than four orders of magnitude higher than previously possible. However, to date, it has been unclear whether it would indeed be possible to measure high-quality diffraction data at megahertz pulse repetition rates. Here, we show that high-quality structures can indeed be obtained using currently available operating conditions at the European XFEL. We present two complete data sets, one from the well-known model system lysozyme and the other from a so far unknown complex of a β-lactamase from K. pneumoniae involved in antibiotic resistance. This result opens up megahertz serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) as a tool for reliable structure determination, substrate screening and the efficient measurement of the evolution and dynamics of molecular structures using megahertz repetition rate pulses available at this new class of X-ray laser source.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗