Overview

BM29 is a tunable energy beamline (from 7 to 15 keV) for Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) experiments of biological macromolecule solutions with the goal to determine their 3-dimensional structures in a natural state with a 'low' resolution (~ nm).

At the beamline are essentially studied proteins, but also nucleic acids (DNA, RNA, peptides,...), protein-based complexes, lipids, membrane proteins (and surfactants), synthetic polymers, glycoproteins, viruses, etc.

The beamline has been re-built from EXAFS to BioSAXS beamline and new Optics hutch equipment have been commissioned. In December 2011 the BioSAXS experiments stopped at ID14-3 and the setup was moved to BM29 location.  The beamline is available for users from June 2012 and has very possitive feedback.

This high performance beamline has been designed to be easy to set up and user-friendly for providing a relative autonomy of users, to achieve:

• robot mode: sample handing equipment with off-axis visualisation, sample cell is a 1 mm diameter quartz capillary with a few tens of micron wall thickness allowing a routine data collection on protein solutions in the temperature range from 4 to 60°C
• on-line HPLC mode: SAXS data recorded (frames) directly on eluted solution from a column

Both modes are provided with automated data collection and processing pipeline.

The achievable q-range is 0.025 - 6 nm^-1, which corresponds to the biggest measurable Rg (radius of gyration) of the investigated particle of 20 nm.