From Our Director
I am looking forward to sharing SSRL's recent scientific achievements,
facility developments and future plans with you at our upcoming Annual
SSRL/LCLS Users’ Meeting.
The Meeting will start off on Wednesday, September 27 with a number of
parallel workshops. The Plenary Session follows the next day with facility
updates, an update from the DOE Office of Basic Energy Sciences and keynote
talks. Presentations honoring awardees for their outstanding science and roles
in the community will take place that afternoon as will the poster session.
Additional workshops will be held on Friday, September 29. See the Meeting
site for more details.
Science Highlights
Structures of the CRISPR Genome Integration Complex –
Contacts: Addison V. Wright and Jennifer A. Doudna, University of
California, Berkeley
CRISPR, a powerful new tool that can target and change specific sequences of
DNA, is based on a prokaryotic immune system response. The first step of
bacterial immunity via CRISPR is placing sequences of foreign (viral) DNA
between specific palindromic DNA repeats in the bacterial genome. The enzyme
complex Cas1-Cas2 must target the correct DNA locus for integration, since
insertion of the viral DNA into other areas of the genome may cause damage to
the bacteria. Read more...
Citation: Wright et al., Science (2017), doi: 10.1126/science.aao0679.
See also: CRISPR
star Jennifer Doudna calls for public debate on embryo editing
Unraveling the Assembly Principles of Bacterial Microcompartments –
Contacts: Cheryl Kerfeld, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Bacterial cells have subcellular features that function as organelles called
microcompartments. Bacterial microcompartments organize cellular metabolism.
These compartments help increase reaction rates by colocalizing reaction
components. They can also sequester sensitive or damaging reactants or products
from the rest of the cell. Part of bacterial microcompartment function is
to allow only some molecules to cross into the compartment while keeping out
others. How this selectivity is possible is not well understood. Read more...
Citation: Sutter et al., Science (2017), doi: 10.1126/science.aan3289.
Awards and Honors
Kathryn Hastie Wins Spicer Award for Lassa Virus Work at
SSRL
Excerpted from August 18, 2017 SLAC News Feature by Angela
Anderson
Kathryn Hastie, staff scientist at The Scripps Research Institute, has spent
the last decade studying how the deadly Lassa virus – which causes up to
half a million cases of Lassa fever each year in West Africa – enters
human cells via a cell surface receptor.
Her efforts were recently rewarded when she solved the first structure of a
surface glycoprotein for any member of the arenaviruses, the lethal family that
includes Lassa, in experiments at SSRL. The work was featured on the cover of
Science and has been instrumental in accelerating development of a
Lassa virus vaccine. She went on to determine three related structures with
therapeutically relevant antibodies, all at SSRL.
In honor of her dedication and determination, Hastie has won SSRL’s
2017 William E. and Diane M. Spicer Young Investigator Award. The award is
given each year to early-career x-ray scientists who perform research at
SSRL. Read more...
See also: TSRI and SLAC press releases.
Stacey Bent Receives ACS Award
Stacey Bent, Jagdeep and Roshni Singh Professor in the School of Engineering
at Stanford University and a long-time SSRL user, has been awarded the 2018 American Chemical Society National Award in Surface
Chemistry. The Bent laboratory is focused on understanding and controlling
surface and interfacial chemistry and applying this knowledge to a range of
problems in semiconductor processing, micro- and nano-electronics,
nanotechnology, and sustainable and renewable energy.
The award recipients will be honored at the Awards Ceremony on Tuesday,
March 20, 2018, in conjunction with the 255th ACS National Meeting in New
Orleans, LA.
Submit Abstracts by September 20 to Compete for Joe Wong Poster
Awards
The Joe Wong Poster Awards have been established to promote
multi-disciplinary interactions among the user community, to recognize the best
poster presentations at the Annual Users' Meeting, and specifically to help
students in preparing for their science careers. The poster awards are open to
users of both the SSRL and the LCLS.
The best poster presentation by an undergraduate or graduate student (BS or
PhD student user) will be awarded $500. Up to two more posters will be selected
for a $250 award. Presenters at any stage of their research career and in any
field can compete for the $250 award.
You must register and submit a poster abstract by September 20 to
participate in the poster session. Students presenting posters get free
registration at the Annual Users' Meeting. Abstract Submission
SSRL Users' Executive Committee
Vote for UEC Membership
The SSRL Executive Committee (UEC) provides an organized
framework for interaction between the scientific user community and SSRL/SLAC
Management to communicate the interests of users regarding SSRL operations and
user support. The UEC meets several times a year and includes
representatives from various scientific areas utilizing SSRL beam lines.
Elected UEC members generally serve three-year terms and elections are held
each fall as some of the members rotate out. This election is held in
conjunction with the Annual Users' Conference. Please take a few
minutes to review the candidates and cast your ballot for the 2017/2018 SSRL
UEC. Vote: SSRL UEC Ballot
Upcoming Events
7th International Conferences on Hard X-ray Photoelectron
Spectroscopy, September 11-15, 2017, Berkeley, CA
We are looking forward to an exciting week of the latest developments in
HAXPES, with plenary and invited speakers, contributed talks and poster
sessions. Conference website
SSRL/LCLS Users' Meeting & Workshops, September 27-29,
2017, Menlo Park, CA
Register to attend the SSRL/LCLS Users’ Meeting on September 27-29,
2017 to share results over the last year and learn about new capabilities,
technology advances and facility plans. Please see the Meeting
website
The activities scheduled over this multi-day event provide many
opportunities to interact with colleagues and discuss current/future
capabilities and science. A number of focused-topic workshops are
scheduled on September 27 and 29. The Plenary Session will take place on
September 28 with facility updates, a DOE BES update by Linda Horton (BES
Materials Science and Engineering Division), keynote talks by Henry Chapman
(DESY) and Serena DeBeer (Max Planck) and presentations by Kathryn Hastie
(TSRI) and Suhas Kumar (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) on their award-winning
research.
Students presenting a poster will receive free registration and free lunch
during the Users' Meeting. For everyone else, catered lunch during the
Users' Conference is available for an additional $30 fee at the time of
registration (or you may provide/purchase your own lunch at the SLAC Cafe or
Starbucks).
We look forward to seeing you at the Annual Users’ Meeting. Early
registration ends September 20.
Cathy Knotts and Leilani Conradson, Managers, SSRL and LCLS Users
Services & the SSRL/LCLS UEC and Joint Users' Meeting Organizing
Committee
5th High-Power Laser Workshop, September 27-28, 2017, Menlo Park,
CA
The 5th HPL workshop will be held co-jointly with the general SSRL/LCLS
Users' Meeting to bring together the international high-energy density
physics community with the LCLS user groups. The workshop will have a dedicated
day to discuss recent experimental results from matter in extreme conditions
enabled by the combination of high-power laser drivers with the world-class
LCLS x-ray beam. Although registration is separate, participants will
take part in the general Users' Meeting plenary session on the second day
and further have a session related to the MEC instrument. The goal is to
discuss the scientific opportunities at the MEC instrument, propose future
standard configurations, and provide time to discuss important physics
proposals and experimental needs for cutting-edge research at MEC. Workshop registration
Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation (SRI 2018), June 10-15,
2018, Taiwan
Save the date for the 13th International Conference on Synchrotron Radiation
Instrumentation (SRI 2018) to be hosted by the National Synchrotron Radiation
Research Center (NSRRC), at the Taipei International Convention Center (TICC),
June 10-15, 2018. Organized by the community of worldwide synchrotron
radiation (SR) and x-ray free electron laser (XFEL) facilities, the triennial
international SRI conference will cover advances in light-source
instrumentation, techniques, and methodology including accelerators, beamlines
and experimental endstations as well as the newest development in x-ray
science. Conference website
User Research Administration
SSRL Beam Time Request Deadlines
- September 12, 2017 – Macromolecular Crystallography requests for beam
time beginning fall 2017.
- November 8, 2017 – X-ray/VUV requests for February-April 2018.
SSRL Proposal Deadlines
- September 1, 2017 – X-ray / VUV
- December 1, 2017 – X-ray/VUV and Macromolecular Crystallography
Submit proposals and beam time requests through the User Portal.
The Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) is a third-generation
light source producing extremely bright x-rays for basic and applied
research. SSRL attracts and supports scientists from around the world who
use its state-of-the-art capabilities to make discoveries that benefit society.
SSRL, a U.S. DOE Office of Science national user facility, is a Directorate of
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, operated by Stanford University for the
U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The SSRL Structural
Molecular Biology Program is supported by the DOE Office of Biological and
Environmental Research, and by the National Institutes of Health, National
Institute of General Medical Sciences. For more information about SSRL science,
operations and schedules, visit http://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu.
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Questions? Comments? Contact Lisa Dunn
