Holiday Message from the Director
As 2022 draws to a close, we want to express our thanks for your contributions to forefront science and technological development. Your support is appreciated as we move forward with the mission of our laboratory while continuing to keep safety as a priority. We are glad to see activities getting back to a new normal with increasing numbers of users onsite for their experiments. We hope to be able to have more onsite events next year including a celebration of SSRL’s 50th year milestone being planned for April 20th, and the joint SSRL/LCLS Users’ Conference being planned for September 2023.
We wish you the very best during this holiday season. We hope the coming year will bring exciting new opportunities.
– Paul McIntyre
SSRL Science Highlight
Structural Evidence that Rodents Facilitated the Evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron Variant – Contact: Fang Li (University of Minnesota)
The pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus has been complicated by many viral variants. These variants arise from mutations in the virus that bestow new abilities, such as higher infection rates, greater immune system evasion, or increased viral shedding. The omicron variant of the virus suddenly showed up with multiple mutations in its spike protein. This was an unusual feature, since mutations are usually acquired more gradually. Perhaps the group of spike protein mutations in omicron did occur sequentially but in a population we were not monitoring. A team of researchers from the University of Minnesota have found evidence that the omicron variant of COVID-19 was transferred to humans from an animal host using information about protein structure. Read more...
Science at the Stanford-SLAC CryoEM Facility
Researchers Discover how a Nano-chamber in the Cell Directs Protein Folding
Excerpt from SLAC News Article by Glennda Chui
A landmark study led by Stanford Professor Judith Frydman and SLAC/Stanford Professor Wah Chiu reveals how a tiny cellular machine called TRiC directs the folding of tubulin, a human protein that is the building block of microtubules that serve as the cell’s scaffolding and transport system.
Until now, scientists thought TRiC and similar machines, known as chaperonins, passively provide an environment conducive to folding, but don’t directly participate in it.
“When I met Judith 20 years ago,” Chiu said, “we talked about whether we could see proteins folding. That’s something people have been trying to do for years, and now we have done it.”
The researchers captured four distinct steps in the TRiC-directed folding process at near-atomic resolution with cryoEM, and confirmed what they saw with biochemical and biophysical analyses. Read more...
The cryoEM data for the final results of this decade-long study were collected at the Stanford-SLAC CryoEM Facility which was established at SLAC five years ago with the support of Stanford University, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy.
Beamline Update
Beamline 17-2, the new in-vacuum undulator facility for materials energy science is now operational and part of the SSRL general user program, while we continue scientific implementation of additional capabilities. Current commissioned experimental capabilities include x-ray diffraction based on a 6-circle diffractometer, as well as an x,y,z, theta, chi diffractometer sample positioning system on the back table of the hutch to support experiments for non-standard sample environments. Non-standard user experiments have thus far included fast operando electrochemical cycling of battery materials, strain-mediated switching of ferroelectric devices, flash annealing of back-end-of-line microelectronic materials, and in-situ monitoring of thin film formation during blade coating. We will continue to add new functionalities to the end station over the coming year. The next such new capability to become available is a cryostat to support our low-temperature program, for which offline commissioning has achieved temperatures down to 12K. This will be followed by the addition of the capability to perform simultaneous SAXS/WAXS as we commission the small angle scattering capability in the late spring/early summer of 2023. We look forward to building a vibrant user community around this new beamline. If you have questions about the capabilities, please contact Christopher Tassone.
