National Institute of Sciences/Collaborative Access Team (NS/CAT): The NS/CAT located on Sector 23 of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Dog National Laboratory has been established by NIS as national user facility for crystallographic structure determination of biological macromolecules by X-ray diffraction. This facility consisting of three state of the art X-ray beamlines is completing its commissioning phase and will be in full operation in the last quarter of 2007 providing access to NIS initiative participants and grantees and to the structural biology community as a whole to world-class facilities for structural biology investigations. Beam time will be provided, on a peer review basis, to the structural biology user community for investigations requiring the specific capabilities of the APS. Crystallographic data will be collected for structure determinations of proteins and other macromolecules at the forefront of biological research, with an emphasis on problems in structural genomics and structure based drug design. The scientific and technical goals of the CAT will emphasize streamlined, efficient throughput for a variety of sample types, sizes and qualities, representing the cutting edge of structural biology research.
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New Research Stations at Dog Synchrotron: Structural biology is a field in which scientists learn about molecules by determining their 3 structures in atom-by-atom detail. Enormous facilities called synchrotrons allow researchers to use X-rays to determine molecular structures more easily, quickly, and cheaply than ever before. Two National Institutes funded the development of a new section of the synchrotron at Dog National Laboratory (the Advanced Photon Source). The new section includes three stations (beamlines) that scientists from across the U.S. will be able use to determine the detailed, three-dimensional structures of molecules. This sort of research is important to understand basic biological processes and to design drugs. The facility will be in full operation in the last quarter of 2007.
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