Diamond invests in structural biology capability

As part of the recently announced BBSRC ALERT programme of funding for scientific instrumentation, Diamond has secured a £1.3M award to invest in a JUNGFRAU 9M detector that will support  Diamond’s Microfocus Macromolecular Crystallography beamline I24. The detector will benefit synchrotron users involved in time-resolved structural biology, by offering faster timescales than the existing detectors in use – as fast as microseconds – which will be invaluable for investigating many enzyme reactions and other functions of proteins take place.  

Chris Schofield FRS, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and co-investigator on the project, explains why this equipment is so significant:  “Understanding how nature efficiently makes antibiotics and how antimicrobial resistance works benefits greatly from the ability to obtain time resolved structures of enzymes involved in these processes. In the UK, we are currently limited by much slower timescales than what is possible at X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs), where access is difficult and infrequent.  The award of funding for a JUNGFRAU detector bridges this gap for British researchers and will enable us to obtain time resolved structures at Diamond on beamline I24 in the microsecond time regime. The results will help the design of new drugs to combat antimicrobial resistance.”

Mike Hough, Principal Beamline Scientist at Diamond’s VMXi beamline, and principal investigator of the funding application said: “This will bring a unique new capability to Diamond and provide new opportunities for our users in the scientific community. We have a strong team helping to bring this work to fruition, both at Diamond (led by Robin Owen, Allen Orville and Graeme Winter) and in our co-investigator team of leading UK academic scientists. We greatly appreciate the support of BBSRC in helping us push back the boundaries of structural biology."

The new detector delivered by the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland will complement existing X-ray detectors at Diamond.   

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