Science Highlights

Approximately 1,700 scientists visit SSRL annually to conduct experiments in broad disciplines including life sciences, materials, environmental science, and accelerator physics. Science highlights featured here and in our monthly newsletter, Headlines, increase the visibility of user science as well as the important contribution of SSRL in facilitating basic and applied scientific research. Many of these scientific highlights have been included in reports to funding agencies and have been picked up by other media. Users are strongly encouraged to contact us when exciting results are about to be published. We can work with users and the SLAC Office of Communication to develop the story and to communicate user research findings to a much broader audience. 

Science Highlight Archive Science Highlight Banner Images

X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy Catches the Chemical Form of Mercury in Fish

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The presence of "methyl mercury" in fish is well-known, but until now the detailed chemical identity of the mercury has remained a mystery.

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Crystal Structures of Mammalian Carboxylesterases and Their Function in Drug and Xenobiotic Metabolism

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SSRL has played an important role in characterizing a family of enzymes that detoxify heroin and cocaine, and have the potential to metabolically eliminate the nerve poisons sarin, soman, and t

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Structural Genomics Identify Thymidylate Synthase Complementing Protein as a Novel Antibacterial Drug Target

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SSRL scientists have determined key binding sites in an enzyme family common to Anthrax, Botulism, Syphilis, Diarrhea and Lyme's disease.

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A New Look at Biological Electron Transfer: Electronic Relaxation in Rubredoxins

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Electron transfer, the process of moving an electron from one place to another, is vital to almost all chemical systems.

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Fate and Stability of Cr Following Reduction by Microbially Generated Fe(II)

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Industrial activities have led to widespread chromium (Cr) contamination in the environment.

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Structure of the Specificity Domain of Bacterial RNase P

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One of the primary ways people find structure and coherence in the world is to identify fundamental characteristics common within and between apparently different classes - plants, humans, a

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Exploring the Folding Landscape of a Structured RNA by SAXS

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Determining how RNA (ribonucleic acid) folds, or "ravels", may offer a key to un-raveling how and why anomalies occur in the human genome.

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Defining the processes controlling arsenic uptake by rice (Oryza sativa L.)

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Rice, the grain that provides more than one-fifth of the world population's calories, can become a health hazard if contaminated with arsenic.

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Assembly and Evolution of Complex Fe-S Clusters as Revealed by X-ray Crystallography

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The potential for using biological enzymes to make hydrogen to use as a renewable energy source is a hot topic, but little is known about how these complex enzymes assemble and work.

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The Structure of a Reaction Intermediate in Enzymatic Halogenation

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Halogenated natural products play important roles as antibiotics, antifungals, and antitumor agents.

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Collaborate on Science Highlights

We can work with users and the SLAC Office of Communication to develop the story and to communicate user research findings to a much broader audience. 

SSRL User Office