Biophysics And Synchrotron Radiation

This book the second volume in the "Springer Series in Biophysics" col lects together contributions to the conference on "Biophysics and Syn chrotron Radiation" held in July 86 at Frascati. This meeting addressed the advances on the structure of biological molecules obtained by using synchrotron radiation. In fact it was most timely to review the results of the research in biophysics which is rapidly developing at synchrotron radiation facilities. Moreover, there was interest to discuss the new perspectives opened up by the future high brilliance synchrotron radia tion sources. With the use of synchrotron radiation, x-ray spectroscopy of biological molecules is firmly established in the techniques of EXAFS and XANES. Contributions to the detailed knowledge of local structure of active sites of metalloproteins by this approach are presented in this volume, together with a number of studies of -the interaction of metal ions with other important biological macromolecular systems. Structural determination of very large biological systems at high reso lution, including a protein and its substrate, are reported. The experi mental advances in protein crystallography presented here reduce the time for solving protein structures, thus satisfying a major require ment of the rapidly-expanding field of protein engineering.

This book represents the edited proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Biophysics and Synchrotron Radiation, held in Tsukuba, Japan in 1992. It discusses advances in the application of synchrotron radiation to biophysics and medicine. The papers have been selected by adistinguished international board after refereeing, and edited for publication. It discusses advances in the application of synchrotron radiation to biophysics and medicine, of interest to researchers from many diverse fields.Just a few of the topics covered are filamentous viruses, angiography, and solution X-ray scattering.

The development of synchrotron radiation (SR) as a research tool was driven largely by the needs of materials scientists and solid-state physi cists. However, the availability of SR has extended significantly the capa bility of scientists who study biological structure with radiation. This volume contains some of the results reported at a symposium held at Brookhaven National Laboratory in May 1988 to discuss the application of synchrotron radiation to structural biology. We are grateful for financial support from the u. s. Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health, Genentech, Inc., Blake Indus tries, Inc., Evans and Sutherland Co., The Upjohn Company, Eli Lilly and Company, Enraf-Nonius Service Corp., and Associated Universities, Inc. We warmly thank Ms. Nancy Siemon for her tireless efforts with correspondence and the manuscripts for this symposium volume. Symposium Committee: Robert M. Sweet, Chair Malcolm S. Capel Benno P. Schoenborn John C. Sutherland Elizabeth C. Theil Stephen W. White Avril D. Woodhead Helen Z. Kondratuk, Coordinator v CONTENTS An Introduction to the Symposium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 R. M. Sweet SYMPOSIUM LECTURE Developments in X-ray Technology and Their Contribution to Structural Biology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 H. E. Huxley SOME OF THE SYNCHROTRON FACILITIES FOR BIOLOGICAL STRUCTURAL STUDIES MacChess - A Macromolecular Diffraction Resource at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 W. Schi1dkamp, K. Moffat, B. Batterman, D. Bilderback, T-Y. Teng, A. LeGrand and D. Szebenyi Facilities Available for Biophysics Research at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 R. P."

This book demonstrates the applications of synchrotron radiation in certain aspects of cell microbiology, specifically non-destructive elemental analyses, chemical-state analyses and imaging (distribution) of the elements within a cell. The basics for understanding and applications of synchrotron radiation are also described to make the contents more easily understood for a wide group of researchers in medical and biological sciences who might not be familiar with the physics of synchrotron radiation.

The unique properties of synchroton radiation including its broad spectrum extending from the infrared to the hard-X-ray region, its high degree of collimation and its polarization make it a powerful tool for a very wide range of applications. Initially it was mainly used to carry out experiments in classical fields like atomic and molecular physics, solid-state physics, chemistry, radiometry and so on. Nowadays it is widely used in many other fields like biophysics, biochemistry, macromolecular crystallography, microtomography, X-ray microscopy, X-ray holography, X-ray lithography, micro engineering and nano fabrication, surface science, material studies, trace and ultra-trace element analysis, medical applications and so on. New-generation storage rings have been and are being built dedicated to these kinds of applications. Also in the biological and medical fields very important results have been obtained. This book contains some of the most important and outstanding topics in the field of radiology, biocrystallography, time-resolved X-ray footprinting of DNA-protein reactions, X-ray microscopy of living biological systems and perspectives of LIGA processes in the realization of microapparata for medical purposes.