diffraction in Biological News

Jet-propelled imaging for an ultrafast light source

... off the atoms and reveal once these complex diffraction patterns have been converted into a 3-D image by ... are the smallest protein nanocrystals from which diffraction patterns have ever been obtained, and the first ... that infer the orientation of the sample from the diffraction pattern itself, even when as few as four percent ...

Argonne scientists use lasers to align molecules

... when bombarded with x-rays. From the resulting diffraction pattern, a real-space image can be reconstructed. ... making it impossible to create a composite diffraction image, Argonne Physicist Robin Santra said. ... Source facility located at Argonne before x-ray diffraction can be done experimentally. ...

Unveiling the structure of microcrystals

... National de Recherche Scientifique used X-ray diffraction at the synchrotron to determine the structure of ... structure. Scientists use X-ray or neutron diffraction to study crystalline structure when the size of ... considered a powder. Scientists can apply powder diffraction to analyse such a material but this technique is ...

Eight ASU faculty elected as AAAS Fellows

... of Physics. He was cited by the AAAS for "distinguished contributions to diffraction physics, especially atomic-resolution electron microscopy, electron diffraction studies of the chemical bond and diffractive (lens-less) x-ray imaging." ...

Research about plant viruses could lead to new ways to improve crop yields

... of imaging techniques cryo-electron microscopy at Vanderbilt, X-ray diffraction at Argonne and scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) at ... figured out how to make good samples and analyzed them using X-ray diffraction and traditional electron microscopy, there were a number of ambiguities in ...

Structures of important plant viruses determined

... using a combination of complementary imaging techniques x-ray diffraction at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory, cryo-electron microscopy at ... even after we were able to do that, and analyze the structures using x-ray diffraction and traditional electron microscopy, there were a lot of ambiguities in ...

Synergy between biology and physics drives cell-imaging technology

... biologists have turned to physicists for help in breaking through this diffraction limit. The result has been the development in recent years of several ... and experimental tools common to physics that allow the physical diffraction limits of light to be broken. As the authors of the article explain, ...

Scripps scientists find structure of a protein that makes cancer cells resistant to chemotherapy

... crystals with x-ray radiation. The atoms in the protein crystals cause the x-rays to diffract, and the scientists collect and analyze the pattern of diffraction to solve the atomic-level structure of the proteins. "The biggest challenge was to get enough protein to purify and make crystals from it," says ...

Synthesizing the most natural of all skin creams

... of just 10% each of lipid molecules and dead skin cells (corneocytes), so the exact composition of the mixture is important. For the lipids, X-ray diffraction measurements at the Dutch/Flemish DUBBLE beamline at the ESRF (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility) allowed the Leiden researchers to find the ...

Tension in the nanoworld

... of an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM), yielding nanoscale resolved images at visible, infrared and terahertz frequencies. The s-SNOM thus breaks the diffraction barrier throughout the electromagnetic spectrum and with its 20 nm resolving power matches the needs of modern nanoscience and technology. Now, ...

Researchers first to 'see' reactive oxygen species in vital enzyme

... intermediates in the flavoprotein, choline oxidase. The researchers accomplished their work by combining two popular synchrotron techniques x-ray diffraction and optical absorption spectroscopy into one setup. By shining beams of powerful x-rays and visible light on the same region of the crystallized ...

New insight into the controls on a go-to enzyme

... researchers first crystallize a protein to be studied. Then, they direct X-rays through the crystal and deduce the protein structure from the diffraction pattern of those X-rays. To overcome the crystallization bottleneck, a lengthy and unpredictable variable in X-ray crystallography, the investigators ...

Argonne scientists peer into heart of compound that may detect chemical, biological weapons

... Joon I Jang, and John B. Ketterson were able to determine the structure and analyze its remarkable properties. ChemMatCARS specializes in x-ray diffraction from ultra-small crystals and is operated by the Center for Advanced Radiation Sources of The University of Chicago. ...

St. Jude study gives new insights into how cells accessorize their proteins

... In this widely used technique, X-rays are directed through the crystal of a protein to be analyzed and its structure deduced from the pattern of diffraction of the X-rays. Comparison of the two structures revealed that, when NEDD8 attaches to cullin-RING, it dramatically modifies the conformation of ...

NIH awards Argonne $800,000 to develop tool to measure distances within proteins

... to develop MADMAX, a precise molecular ruler for measuring distances within a protein. MADMAX, which stands for the Multi-wavelength Anomalous diffraction using Medium Angle X-ray solution scattering, would not only dramatically reduce the time necessary to reveal the behaviors of a protein, but could ...

Landmark study opens door to new cancer, aging treatments

... the protein in the quantities we needed, we were able to move quickly." The researchers used X-ray crystallography, a technique that analyzes the diffraction patterns of X-rays beamed at crystals of a molecule, to determine the three-dimensional structure of the enzyme's active regionthe catalytic ...

New electrostatic-based DNA microarray technique could revolutionize medical diagnostics

... resolution limits. "Since the resolution of electrostatic-based imaging is determined by the number of particle-observations rather than by the diffraction limit of light, our readouts could serve as a form of ultramicroscopy," he said. "The real grand challenge for this technology, however, will be for ...

Montana State University researchers map iron transport protein

... the structure of different substances. In their basement lab in the campuss New Chemistry Building, Lawrence and Sendamarai then examined the diffraction patterns created by Steap3. Its kind of like a contour map, Sendamarai said. Whenever we see the peaks, we know there are atoms. Working ...

Synchrotron light unveils oil in ancient Buddhist paintings from Bamiyan

... of synchrotron techniques such as infrared micro-spectroscopy, micro X-ray fluorescence, micro X-ray absorption spectroscopy or micro X-ray diffraction was crucial for the outcome of the work. "On one hand, the paintings are arranged as superposition of multiple layers, which can be very thin. The ...

Researchers mimic bacteria to produce magnetic nanoparticles

... nanoparticles which showed that Mms6 produced well-formed, faceted crystals resembling those produced naturally by the bacteria. Powder X-ray diffraction studies verified the crystal structure of the particles. Ames Lab physicist Ruslan Prozorov, tested the magnetic properties of the synthetic ...

ESF conference probes water's mysterious interactions at molecular level

... were used to reveal information of water at solid, soft, vapour, protein, membrane, and other interfaces, she said. High resolution x-ray diffraction is an important technique for analysing water molecules at interfaces, observing the way high-energy x-ray beams are scattered at the points of ...

Research at Argonne's Advanced Photon Source reveals structure and behavior of collagen

... of an entire fibril in the same way that they could study an individual collagen molecule, according to Orgel. Orgel and his team performed diffraction studies on intact collagen fibrils inside the tendons of rat tails in order to understand just how the protein functioned within unbroken tissue. ...

Engineers demonstrate a new type of optical tweezer

... locations. Moreover, in experimental trials, the optical tweezers exhibited trapping performance comparable to conventional optical tweezers when the diffraction efficiency was taken into account. The researchers envision using their new tweezer inside microfluidic chips to carry out fluid velocity, ...

Lensless camera uses X-rays to view nanoscale materials and biological specimens

... The key is the high intensity X-ray beams created at the APS at Argonne. An intense, coherent X-ray beam collides with the sample, creating a diffraction pattern which is recorded by a charge coupled device (CCD) camera. The X-ray energy is tuned to an atomic resonance of a target element in the ....

Astronomy technology brings nanoparticle probes into sharper focus

... designed to handle crowded fields of stars. After adapting DAOPHOT, the research team used color-coded nanoparticles to beat the traditional diffraction limit by nearly two orders of magnitude, allowing routine super-resolution imaging at one nanometer resolution. And by using DNA molecules, two ...

American Chemical Society's weekly PressPac -- Jan. 9, 2008

... work remained a mystery. The researchers extracted guanine crystals from the skin of the Japanese Koi fish and analyzed the crystals using X-ray diffraction and an electron microscope. They compared the results to guanine crystals made in the laboratory. The researchers found that the biogenic crystals ...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Dec. 12, 2007

... proteins that are biomarkers for the growth of cancer cells with microscopic magnetic beads and assembled them to form a structure termed a diffraction grating. A laser beam focused on the grating yielded a pattern that could potentially be used to determine the biomarker concentration and thus the ...

Media highlights in the Dec. 15 issue of Biophysical Journal

... National Cardiovascular Center Naoto Yagi, JASRI, SPring-8 Keywords: cardiac contraction; interfilament spacing; myosin cross-bridges; x-ray diffraction The intrinsic ability of the heart to adjust the strength of its contractions to the amount of blood filling the heart has been the subject of ...

New form of compound stimulates research on hydrogen storage

... much higher pressures still can be reached in the lab using the same diamond anvil cell technique, but this was not necessary for this experiment. diffraction of synchrotron light was used to determine arrangement of atoms in the resulting materials. In this way two novel structures of lithium borohydride ...

New X-ray technique targets terrorists and tumors

... published online today, Wednesday 28 November 2007. The technique developed by the Manchester scientists is known as tomographic energy dispersive diffraction imaging or TEDDI. It harnesses all the wavelengths present in an x-ray beam to create probing 3D pictures. The technique improves on existing ...

Liquid crystal phases of tiny DNA molecules point up new scenario for first life on Earth

... much like magnetic buttons -- as they expelled water in between them, Clark said. A key characterization technique employed was X-ray microbeam diffraction combined with in-situ optical microscopy, carried out with researchers from Argonne and Brookhaven National Laboratories. The team using a machine ...

$1.1 million NSF grant to fund research in advanced light microscopy at UCLA

... for nanoscopic resolution of biological and artificial samples. Despite using regular lenses and visible light, the microscope is not limited by diffraction and diplays a x10 resolution improvement over conventional light microscopes. STED microscopy provides an alternative to electron microscopy ...

Northwestern to expose most deadly infectious diseases in 3-D

... scientists place a protein crystal -- just 1/10 of a millimeter -- into the Synchrotron x-ray beam. As the x-rays scatter off the crystal, the diffraction pattern reveals the location of the protein's electrons and atoms, a process called x-ray crystallography. In early November, the university will ...

New approach builds better proteins inside a computer

... Researchers often rely on x-ray crystallography to determine a proteins structure bombarding the molecule with x-rays and analyzing the resulting diffraction pattern to piece together its structure. But not all proteins are amenable to this time-consuming technique, and those that are do not always yield ...

First high-res 3D structures of mammalian HSP90 protein solved

... folding, such as cystic fibrosis, prion diseases , and Alzheimers Disease. Since 2001, Gewirth and his lab have been using the technique of X-ray diffraction to solve the first high-resolution structure of this protein from mammalian origins, to understand its function and to determine if it is indeed a ...

New law for resolution allows unprecedented sharpness in fluorescence microscopy

... the law postulated by Ernst Abbe in 1873 for diffraction limited resolution in light microscopes. Stefan ... a physically consistent concept for breaking the diffraction limited resolution limit in fluorescence ... fluctuation methods were also limited by diffraction as a result. Therefore, in a fourth study [4], ...

The making and breaking of microtubules

... having to break them down and crystallize single subunits for x-ray diffraction analysis. X?ray diffraction might allow higher resolution, but it would lose all information ...

Scientists identify molecular cause for one form of deafness

... their findings in a paper accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters, and posted on its Web site. High-resolution X-ray diffraction experiments, performed by Purdy at the Advanced Photon Source and at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, allowed the researchers to solve ...

RNA enzyme structure offers a glimpse into the origins of life

... conditions before he succeeded. Using x-ray crystallography--which involves shining a beam of x-rays through the crystals and analyzing the resulting diffraction patterns--Robertson and Scott were then able to determine the three-dimensional structure of the ribozyme. The ribozyme has three stems that ...