Support

Dr. Hogue to Present at Arizona Science Center on May 2 at 7 p.m. for Adults Night Out

Cutting-Edge X-ray Methods for Studies in Biology

Knowledge about infectious agents such as viruses and proteins is important for understanding biological processes and guiding design of new drugs for medical applications. X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) are two primary techniques currently used for understanding the structures of proteins and viruses at the molecular level.  Some proteins are difficult to crystallize and often produce only small crystals that are not suitable for conventional X-ray crystallography studies.  It is desirable to understand the structure of virus particles in their native form, rather than having these incorporated into crystals or viewed in a frozen state for cryo-EM analysis.

The recent development of X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) that provide femtosecond, ultra-bright X-ray pulses has opened new exciting opportunities in structural biology to overcome some of the problems. XFEL pulses are so short that diffraction images can be obtained before samples are destroyed by radiation and large amounts of data can be collected in short timeframes.  The new developing field of XFEL biology is cutting edge technology that stands to significantly contribute to, potentially transform, structural studies in biology, with implications for structure-based drug design and deeper understandings of fundamental processes like photosynthesis and cellular and pathogen functions.

Learn more!  http://azscience.org/who_are_you/adults_night_out_event