Protein Crystallography Station | PCS

Structural Enzymology

The Protein Crystallography Station (PCS) at LANSCE is a high performance beam line that is funded by DOE OBER. It forms the core of a capability for joint neutron and X-ray macromolecular structure and function determination. The PCS is the first protein crystallography beam line to be built at a spallation neutron source and is still the only resource of its kind in North America. The beam-line exploits the pulsed nature of spallation neutrons and a large electronic detector in order to efficiently collect wavelength resolved Laue patterns using all available neutrons in the white beam (0.7 – 7 Å wavelength band).

Neutron crystallography is a powerful technique for locating H atoms that can be hard to detect using X-rays. The PCS therefore provides unique information about how H is involved in the function of biological macromolecules. Most PCS Users require this information in order to understand the details of enzyme mechanism, drug binding, or protein hydration and dynamics. See below for recent scientific progress made using data collected at the PCS.

Users of the PCS have free access to an integrated capability that we call "gene to structure" support. This is unique to Los Alamos and includes neutron beam-time, access to deuteration facilities, the expression of proteins and the synthesis of substrates with stable isotopes, and also support for data reduction and structure analysis. We have also recently acquired a Rigaku HighFlux X-ray system and can now collect both room temperature and cryo X-ray and neutron data in-house. The PCS accommodates around 25-40 users (~25 proposals) per year and beam time is allocated through a peer review process by an external committee. Users can contact Zoë Fisher (zfisher@lanl.gov) or the User Office (ljp@lanl.gov) regarding information about the PCS and how to obtain beamtime.