NorStruct Seminar Announcement

Protein structure and dynamics using X-ray free-electron lasers

Dr. Ilme Schlichting
Max Planck Institute for Medical Research
Department of Biomolecular Mechanisms, Heidelberg, Germany

Wednesday September 7^th, 2016, 12:15-13:00
MH Store Auditorium

Protein crystallography using synchrotron radiation sources has had tremendous impact on biology, having yielded the structures of thousands of proteins and given detailed insight into their working mechanisms. However, the technique is limited by the requirement for macroscopic crystals, which can be difficult to obtain, as well as by the often severe radiation damage caused in diffraction experiments, in particular when using tiny crystals. To slow radiation damage, data collection is typically performed at cryogenic temperatures.

The femtosecond X-ray pulses provided by X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) allow the acquisition of high resolution diffraction data from micron-sized macromolecular crystals at room temperature beyond the limitations of radiation damage imposed by conventional X-ray sources. Moreover, the short duration of the pulses enable time-resolved studies at the chemical time-scale of femtoseconds. The novel sources require new approaches for sample preparation, delivery, data collection and analysis. These^[1] as well as recent results obtained will be presented.

^[1] Schlichting, I. (2015) IUCrJ 2: 246-255. Serial femtosecond crystallography: the first five years.

Dr. Ilme Schlichting is a director at the Max Planck Institute for medical Research, Dept. of Biomolecular Mechanisms. Schlichting’s research aims at understanding how proteins achieve their unique functional properties. Key insight is obtained from structures of reaction intermediates. Schlichting was the first to successfully combine photolysis of caged compounds and Laue crystallography to study GTP hydrolysis by the Ras protein, to observe ligand binding intermediates in myoglobin, and to resolve the reaction intermediates of a cytochrome P450 at high spatial resolution. Her latest interests include the application of X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) for structural biology.