methodsandtechs

Crystallographic Methods and Beamline Technology

Beamline and crystallographic methods development undertaken by staff of the Structural Biology group.

The demand on beamtime is increasing with the user community requiring faster access, larger detectors and specialised beamline setups. The ESRF MX Group, working closely with the EMBL Grenoble Outstation, continuously develops its suite of beamline to keep pace with these user demands. It is not only the beamline hardware that features in the development work but also crystallographic methodology to improve the way beamlines collect data, the way it is understood afterwards and to add complementary information to the standard diffraction data by combining experiments on and off the beamlines.

Lab

Biology

The ESRF MX Group carries out an exciting range of biological research ranging from crystallographic structural studies to biochemistry, molecular biology, cellular biology and modelling.

The Group has established strong collaborations with a number of groups from around Europe and joint students and visitors are a regular feature. The ESRF is one of the four founding members, together with EMBL, IBS and ILL, of The Partnership for Structural Biology and benefits from this environment and the combined set of technology platforms forming the core of the PSB.
Publication

Publications

Over the last five years the MX Group have been responsible for publishing over  150 peer-reviewed research papers from the results of the crystallographic methods, beamline developments and biological research carried out by the group.

The user community of the seven end station suite have published more than 1000  papers and deposited 3200 structures in the public databases.