Synchrotron Serial Crystallography Available at the GM/CA @ APS

Synchrotron serial crystallography experiments are now available to interested users at GM/[email protected]

Samples can be delivered to the x-ray beam via either:

A Lipidic Cubic Phase (LCP) injector
A variety of fixed target systems

GM/[email protected] staff have collaborated with user groups to prove the feasibility at beamlines 23IDB and 23IDD. Structures have been determined with an LCP injector from Arizona State University (ASU), as well as with several different types of fixed targets at room temperature and at cryogenic temperature. Background information and publications are listed below. For those interesting in using the LCP injector, please contact Dr. David Kissick ([email protected]); for those interested in employing fixed targets, please contact Dr. Craig M. Ogata.

Viscous Jet

ASU Injector (in house) at the GM/CA 23-ID-D beamline: (a) Schematic diagram of the setup. (b) LCP injector (Weierstall et al., 2014) mounted on translation stages (not shown). The catcher is also shown. (c) View of the LCP stream extruding out of a 50 mm glass capillary nozzle. The intersection point of the two white dashed lines indicates the position of the X-ray beam. Reference: J.M. Martin-Garcia, C.E. Conrad, G. Nelson, N. Stander, N.A. Zatsepin, J. Zook, L. Zhu, J. Geiger, E. Chun, D. Kissick, M. Hilgart, C. Ogata, A. Ishchenko, N. Nagaratnam, S. Roy-Chowdhury, J. Coe, G. Subramanian, A. Schaffer, D. James, G. Ketwala, N. Venugopalan, S. Xu, S. Corcoran, D. Ferguson, U. Weierstall, U., J.C.H. Spence, V. Cherezov, P. Fromme, R.F. Fischetti, W. Liu, IUCrJ, 4, 439-454 (2017).

Serial Viewer: Rapid automated analysis of thousands of sparse images.


Long tapered beamstop: 10x background reduction.

Data processing: GM/CA software uses CrystFEL and the GMCA driver within the JBluIce graphical user interface.

Fixed Target

Highly sensitive raster scans of a fixed targets via JBluIce GUI. Reference: J. Broecker, T. Morizumi, W.-L. Ou, V. Klingel, A. Kuo, D.J. Kissick, A. Ishchenko, M.-Y. Lee, S. Xu, O. Makarov, V. Cherezov, C.M. Ogata, O.P. Ernst, Nature Protocols 13(2), 260-292 (2018)..


Fixed targets available via 3D printing. Reference: J. Broecker, V. Klingel, W.-L. Ou, A.R. Balo, D.J. Kissick, C.M. Ogata, A.L. Kuo, O.P. Ernst, Cryst. Growth Des. 16(11), 6318-6326 (2016).

An early demonstration of fixed target serial crystallography on the GM/CA beamlines with a novel chip and post-refinement in data reduction.. Reference: T.D. Murray, A.Y. Lyubimov, C.M. Ogata, H. Vo, M. Uervirojnangkoorn, A.T. Brunger, J.M. Berger, Acta Cryst. D71, 1987-1997 (2015).