July 23, 2004

Introducing Beamline X29: The Brightest Beamline at the NSLS

A new experimental station dedicated to macromolecular crystallography has been completed and has commenced operation at beamline X29. The mini-gap in-vacuum undulator beamline was built in a collaboration between the BNL Biology Department, the Center for Synchrotron Biosciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and the NSLS.

The funding for construction and operation comes from the Department of Energy’s Offices of Basic Energy Sciences and Biological & Environmental Research, and the National Institutes of Health (specifically, the National Center for Research Resources, the National Institute for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, and the National Institute of General Medical Sciences).

The beamline was constructed especially to meet the increasing demand at the NSLS for a high-brightness x-ray beam for state-of-the-art macromolecular crystallography research, which had previously been served by a single beamline, X25.

The x-ray optics for the beamline consists of a Si(111) double crystal monochromator, with the first crystal being cryogenically cooled and second crystal bendable to provide sagittal focusing of the horizontal beam fan, followed by a vertically focusing mirror. The experimental station includes a Crystal Logic diffractometer, an ADSC Q315 CCD x-ray area detector, and an Oxford Instruments Cryojet sample conditioner. Already in heavy use by conventional means, the focus of this facility will be automation and high throughput operation. A fraction of this new beamline’s use will be devoted to both “FedEx” (mail-in) crystallography and structural genomics.