Canadian Light Source (CLS) – Page 2

X-rays capture ageing process in EV batteries

2022/04/052022/04/07

CLS researcher Toby Bond uses x-rays to help engineer powerful electric vehicle batteries with longer lifetimes. His research, published in The Journal of the Electrochemical Society, shows how the charge/discharge cycles of batteries cause physical damage eventually leading to reduced energy storage. This new work points to a link between cracks that form in the battery material and depletion of vital liquids that carry charge.

Bond uses the BMIT facility at the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan to produce detailed CT scans of the inside of batteries. Working with Dr. Jeff Dahn at Dalhousie University, he specializes in batteries for electric vehicles, where the research imperative is to pack in as much energy as possible into a lightweight device.

In lithium-ion batteries, this is because charging physically forces lithium ions between other atoms in the electrode material, pushing them apart. Adding more charge causes more growth in the materials, which shrink back down when the lithium ions leave. Over many cycles of this growing and shrinking, micro-cracks begin to form in the material, slowly reducing its ability to hold a charge.

Image: Toby Bond adjusts a battery sample on the BMIT beamline

A promising treatment for ovarian cancer

2022/03/142022/03/17

Scientists are looking to harness the immune system to fight cancer

Over 20,000 women across the U.S. and Canada are diagnosed with ovarian cancer annually. The symptoms of this disease are often overlooked until it has spread, making it difficult to detect and treat with conventional methods like radiation and chemotherapy.

Dr. Cory Books, Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at California State University, Fresno, is looking to harness the immune system to fight cancer. He is interested in a particular protein, called mucin, that is found throughout the body and is involved with the production of mucus. This protein is altered in cancer cells, which makes it a unique target for researchers.

“The cell stops adding sugars to the protein, so instead of having this mucus layer, now it has a solid protein layer, and cancer uses that to help spread itself through the body,” Brooks said.

This alteration helps ovarian cancer grow and spread, but it also leaves a signal that can help clinicians locate the cancer and kill it.

“What that means now is that there’s sort of this unique signature that we can target with antibodies to develop a new treatment for cancer,” Brooks said.

Researchers have been interested in this protein since the late 1980s but have never before been able to visualize how antibodies interact with the molecule.

With the help of the CMCF beamline at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) located at the University of Saskatchewan, Brooks and his team were able to see how antibodies bind to the protein for the first time.

Image: Brandy White, lead author on the study and graduate student with the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at California State University, Fresno.

Developing new alloys for hydrogen fuel and catalysis

2022/01/252022/01/27

An alloy is a metal that contains two or three different elements. Steel, for instance, is an alloy of iron and carbon that offers increased strength as a building material.

By mixing more elements together, scientists hope to create new and improved alloys with increased strength and improved corrosion resistance, which could help many industry sectors to reduce costs.

“The trouble is that when you try to make a traditional alloy with more than a couple of elements, the elements tend to separate from each other and clump together,” said David Morris, a PhD student in the Department of Chemistry at the Dalhousie University.

That’s why his research team is interested in alloys with five or more elements that have a highly disordered nature. This chaotic property causes the elements to disperse throughout the mixture and prevent clumping. “You can get alloys with elements that wouldn’t usually go together,” he said.

Morris and his colleagues, including Liangbing Hu’s group from the University of Maryland who synthesized the samples using a special carbothermal shock method, are investigating two alloy samples, one made of five elements and another with fifteen.

“Early experiments suggested that the five-element alloy has high catalytic activity for ammonia decomposition, a process used to make hydrogen fuel, but they potentially have all kinds of applications,” he said.

The team gathered data at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) in Illinois, thanks to the facility’s partnership with the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan. Using synchrotron light, Morris could analyze each element in their samples separately and spot the differences in the structures of the two alloys.

The researchers discovered that the fifteen-element alloy had some elements that showed oxidation and the length of some of the bonds between them increased. These properties, however, were not found in the five-element alloy, indicating the properties of these special alloys are highly dependent on their compositions.

“Increased oxidation means they are less stable, which could potentially increase the activity for catalysis,” said Morris. “And unusual bond lengths can change the properties and maybe make a more promising catalytic pathway.”

The group’s next step will be to try and link the changes in structure seen in this experiment to the alloys’ catalytic activity. “If we are able to find certain structural properties that are associated with a high catalytic activity, that would allow us to design more effective catalysts in the future,” said Morris.

Blowing in the wind

2022/01/102022/01/13

Monitoring dust from legacy mine tailings to keep communities safe

Queen’s university researchers have studied dust blown from legacy mine tailings at the Giant Mine in Yellowknife, NWT and determined vital information to inform future remediation efforts.

Using the CLS@APS, the researchers were able to determine the chemical form of arsenic in dust particles sourced from the Giant Mine tailings which intermittently blow into nearby communities.

“The synchrotron is really useful for looking at dust because you have this really tiny micron scale beam that you can focus on individual dust particles and get really good data,” said Queen’s researcher Alex Bailey, who conducted the study as part of her Master’s.

Giant Mine is a decommissioned gold mine located 5 km North of Yellowknife that is currently being remediated. The main concern around this site is the existence of toxic-to-humans arsenic trioxide which was formed as a byproduct of ore processing in the 1950s and 60s. Arsenic trioxide had been previously found in local soils and lake sediments, and there was a concern from local residents that arsenic trioxide may be present in dust generated from surface tailings which intermittently blows into the community. It was important for the wellbeing and peace of mind of nearby community members to understand what dust from these tailings might carry.

By analyzing dust-sized material from the surface of the mine tailings and dust captured from a strategic location using detailed mineralogical analysis, synchrotron, and more conventional techniques, the team was able to identify what forms the arsenic would take and its implications for human health.

Image: Alex Bailey at the APS synchrotron collecting uXRD and uXRF data for sieved tailings dust samples

Developing pain medication with fewer side effects

2021/11/302021/12/01

Opiates like morphine and codeine provide many patients with relief: from the ache felt after mild surgery to chronic pain experienced by cancer patients. However, this type of medication can cause multiple side effects and can lead to physical dependency with long-term use. Improving pain medication would help millions of people to have a better quality of life.

Dr. Ken Ng, a professor at the University of Windsor and adjunct professor at the University of Calgary (UCalgary), and Sam Carr, a PhD student from UCalgary, have been working with Dr. Peter Facchini’s group at UCalgary to better understand how natural opiates are produced. The team has narrowed their focus on one enzyme in the last stage of opiate assembly, a process that occurs naturally in the poppy plant.

“Imagine this sort of like an assembly line,” Carr said. “There are a lot of different steps in this specific pathway, and each enzyme contributes a different step from the starting product to the finished drug.”

Read more on the Canadian Light Source (CLS) website

Image: Structure of the enzyme studied, a molecule of codeine, and a seed capsule from an opium poppy.

Credit: Sam Carr.

Developing new drugs for superbugs like MRSA

2021/11/172021/11/18

The team is using bright beams at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to image how potential antibiotic-enhancing drugs interact with a molecule vital for building the cell wall of bacteria.

Staphylococcus aureus (the “SA” part of MRSA) has a thick protective cell wall that can make it difficult for some antibiotic drugs to attack it. That wall is an attractive target for drugs. If a therapeutic can weaken or break the wall, then the bacteria will die.

One protein that makes an attractive target for drugs is called UppS. It is involved in assembling part of the lipid scaffold on which the wall is built. Attacking UppS could weaken the wall and make the bacteria more susceptible to existing antibiotics, says Sean Workman, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biology at the University of Regina.

“By slowing down the function of UppS we can make the bacteria more sensitive to other drugs,” he says.

Eric Brown, a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences at McMaster University, went looking for drugs that could target the early steps in the creation of the cell wall and found clomiphene, an already-approved fertility drug that could interfere with UppS. He and his colleagues then used the same techniques to find several new molecules that could do the same thing, two of which – MAC-0547630 and JPD447 – seemed to be worth a closer look.

Image:UppS protein crystals used to obtain high resolution diffraction data.

Credit: Canadian Light Source

#LightSourceSelfies – Light Source scientists are innovators

2021/11/172021/11/17

Kathryn Janzen is an Associate Scientist and User Experience Coordinator at the Canadian Light Source. During her #LightSourceSelfie, Kathryn reflects on the light source community saying “The contacts between light sources are really important and everyone is very interested in sharing ideas. We’re also really interested in innovating and finding new ways to use the light source and finding new applications for old techniques.”

Protecting our bones after diabetes and hypertension

2021/11/082021/11/11

On November 14, World Diabetes Day aims to raise awareness for the global health threat posed by diabetes, which affects over 460 million people globally, and to promote coordinated efforts to confront diabetes.

People living with type II diabetes and hypertension face an increased risk of bone fractures. An international team of researchers has used the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) to identify a potential bone health therapy that could one day alleviate that problem.

The collaboration between the Bone-Muscle Research Center at the University of Texas at Arlington (BMRC-UTA) and the Colleges of Medicine and Kinesiology at USask explored whether hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) could help reduce the fracture risk for people with type II diabetes. Since 50-85 % of diabetic patients live with hypertension, and both conditions are linked to a higher risk of breaks, this population is particularly vulnerable.

Dr. Kamal Awad, research scientist at the BMRC-UTA and first author on the study, said “bones protect our internal organs and allow us to move, thus maintaining a healthy bone is crucial especially for people suffering from diabetes and hypertension”.

This study focused on HGF, which is a naturally occurring molecule that is known to regulate cell growth throughout the body. Awad said it is also “associated with bone regeneration, remodelling, and the balance between osteoblast and osteoclast, but what was unknown is how HGF affects the chemical structure of the bone.”

Natasha Boyes, a PhD candidate specializing in cardiovascular disease in the College of Kinesiology at USask and first co-author, is interested in the whole-body effects of cardiovascular disease, and explained remodelling as a change process bones undergo throughout a person’s life.

“Most people think bone should be hard,” she said, “but hard bone can be very brittle. What you want is bone with the right architecture, and bone is always changing. Any stimulus can cause bone to adjust its structure. For example, if you’re a runner, your bones will change and adapt to better cope with the pounding (biomechanical stress). That’s remodelling.”

To explore how HGF might improve bone health, the researchers did site-specific injections of HGF on diabetic hypertensive rats, then used spectroscopy at the CLS to study the bone chemical structure with a focus on calcium and phosphorous. The team utilized the facility’s specialized SGM, VLS-PGM, and SXRMB beamline facilities for this analysis.

Image: VLS-PGM beamline

Credit: CLS

Understanding how a key antibody targets cancer cells

2021/10/122021/10/14

Immunotherapy can be used as a precise intervention in cancer treatments. Jean-Philippe Julien is a Canada Research Chair in Structural Immunology, a Senior Scientist in the Molecular Medicine Program at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), and an Associate Professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Immunology at the University of Toronto. Along with colleagues from the U.S., Spain and Canada, he used the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan to study how a candidate antibody therapeutic interacts with a surface receptor on cancer cells, which provides important molecular insights for designing improved cancer therapies. He mentioned how the synchrotron is “incredibly important for researchers like myself” and how “we cannot do the research that we do without it.” The team used the CMCF beamline at the CLS and their findings were published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.Immunotherapy can be used as a precise intervention in cancer treatments. Jean-Philippe Julien is a Canada Research Chair in Structural Immunology, a Senior Scientist in the Molecular Medicine Program at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), and an Associate Professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Immunology at the University of Toronto. Along with colleagues from the U.S., Spain and Canada, he used the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan to study how a candidate antibody therapeutic interacts with a surface receptor on cancer cells, which provides important molecular insights for designing improved cancer therapies. He mentioned how the synchrotron is “incredibly important for researchers like myself” and how “we cannot do the research that we do without it.” The team used the CMCF beamline at the CLS and their findings were published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Image: Jean-Philippe Julien

Credit: Canadian Light Source

Scientists tackle indoor air pollution

2021/09/142021/09/16

People on average spend nearly 90% of their time indoors and, especially in the cold winter months in Canada, this statistic can be even higher. With all that time spent indoors, filtering out pollutants from indoor air is very important for the health of Canadians.

Researchers from the College of Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) have been developing a catalyst for a new type of air purifying technique that would clean air at room temperature.

“Ozone is one of the strongest purifying agents that has been used in the water treatment industry for a long time. In our research, we use ozone and an effective catalyst to purify indoor air from Volatile Organic Compounds or VOCs,” explained PhD student Mehraneh Ghavami.

Ghavami and co-researcher Dr. Jafar Soltan used the HXMA beamline at the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at USask to discover which types of metal catalysts would work best for eliminating pollutants out of the air and recently published their findings.

Their air purifying system uses ozone gas and a catalyst to remove indoor air pollutants and turn them into carbon dioxide and water.

Image: Mehraneh Ghavami using the CLS’ HXMA beamline

Credit: CLS

Using science to make the best chocolate yet

2021/08/312021/09/03

Scientists used synchrotron technology to show a key ingredient can create the ideal chocolate structure and could revolutionize the chocolate industry.

Structure is key when it comes creating the best quality of chocolate. An ideal internal structure will be smooth and continuous, not crumbly, and result in glossy, delicious, melt-in-your-mouth decadence. However, this sweet bliss is not easy to achieve.

Researchers from the University of Guelph had their first look at the detailed structure of dark chocolate using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan. Their results were published today in Nature Communications.

“One of the major problems in chocolate making is tempering,” said Alejandro Marangoni, a professor at the University of Guelph and Canada Research Chair in Food, Health and Aging. “Very much like when you temper steel, you have to achieve a certain crystalline structure in the cocoa butter.”

Skilled chocolate makers use specialized tools and training to manipulate cocoa butter for gourmet chocolate. However, Marangoni wondered if adding a special ingredient to chocolate could drive the formation of the correct crystal structure without the complex cooling and mixing procedures typically used by chocolatiers during tempering.

Image: Dr. Saeed Ghazani tempering chocolate. Dept. Food Science University of Guelph.

Developing antiviral drugs to treat COVID-19 infections

2021/08/102021/08/11

The rapid development of safe and effective vaccines has helped bring the pandemic under control. However, with the rise of variants and an uneven global distribution of vaccines, COVID-19 is a disease we will have to manage for some time.

Antiviral drugs that target the way the virus replicates may be the best option for treating outbreaks of COVID-19 in unvaccinated and under-vaccinated populations.

Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, researchers from the University of Alberta (U of A) have isolated some promising inhibitors that could be used to treat COVID-19 infections. The scientists used the synchrotron remotely during the facility’s special COVID-19 call for proposals, an initiative created to support research to help fight the pandemic.

The team’s findings have been recently published in the European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

“With the help of the CLS, and the multiple teams here at the U of A, including the our lab and the Young lab in the Department of Biochemistry, Vederas lab in the Department of Chemistry, and Tyrrell team in Medical Microbiology and Immunology Department, we’ve been very efficient at developing a group of inhibitors that is very promising,” said Joanne Lemieux, a professor at the U of A.

Image: Michel Fodje, CLS Senior Scientist, using the CMCF beamline at the CLS, which was used for this project.

Credit: Canadian Light Source

Scientists break record while battling antibiotic resistance

2021/07/202021/07/26

Drug-resistant diseases could cause up to 10 million deaths a year by 2050, according to the World Health Organization. Scientists used the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to better understand how current antibiotics work and how we might curb bacterial resistance to these life-saving drugs.

Many new antibiotics are able to kill infection-causing bacteria by binding to these bacteria’s ribosomes, which are the essential machines that make proteins. In order to see exactly what antibiotics do at an atomic level, researchers from McGill University used the CLS to determine the physical structure of a ribosome as it interacted with one of the newest antibiotics.

To understand how some bacteria are already resistant to this new antibiotic, they also determined how the drug interacts with a key bacterial enzyme that causes the resistance. The results were recently published in Nature Communications Biology.

Visualizing the antibiotic bound to the ribosome, which is a complex with 300,000 atoms, was a feat that took the team roughly five years to complete. In the process, the scientists broke the record for the largest structure ever analyzed using the CMCF beamline at the CLS, which is the only facility of its kind in Canada. The previous record, set in 2013, was for a structure six times smaller.

Image: Dr Albert Berghuis

Credit: Canadian Light Source

Wax proves key to protecting crops from drought and frost

2021/06/162021/06/28

A team of researchers used the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) to show that cuticular wax—a waxy layer that covers exterior surfaces of plants, much like human skin—provides a barrier against low temperatures and dehydration.

While numerous studies have established the role of cuticular wax in impacting drought resistance, few studies have examined its role in plant frost resistance and even fewer have examined both, said Dr. Karen Tanino with the College of Agriculture and Bioresource at USask. Her team’s findings were published recently in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.

The ultimate goal of the research is to provide plant breeders with information that enables them to more efficiently select superior genetic lines and develop more climate-resistant crops, said Tanino.

Image: The team studied a variety of Arabidopsis phenotypes during the project.

Towards a therapy for Parkinson’s disease

2021/05/182021/05/20

Over 100,000 Canadians are living with Parkinson’s disease and 25 more are diagnosed every day, according to Parkinson Canada.

Patients experience tremors, stiffness, and difficulty with movement. Dr. Jean-Francois Trempe, an Associate Professor with McGill University, and colleagues are using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan to help search for potential drug targets for the disease.

“I work on a set of proteins that are involved in quality control,” said Trempe. “These proteins are able to sort the damaged proteins from the non-damaged proteins and they send the damaged ones off to be degraded and that’s important for the long-term survival of neurons.”

His team used bright synchrotron light at the CLS to gain insights into a protein involved in formation of flagella, which are important notably for fluid circulation in the brain. By finding new information about this protein, their team is contributing to a body of knowledge that will hopefully lead to a therapy down the road.

Read more and watch the video on the CLS website

Battling bad bugs

2021/03/302021/04/08

Scientists fight antibiotic resistance by using synchrotron to study scab disease in potatoes.

In the ongoing war against antibiotic resistant bacteria, a change in battle tactics may prove effective for controlling a common disease of plants and potentially other toxins that affect humans and animals.

Although bacterial toxins cause serious, often deadly diseases, “bacteria aren’t trying to be nasty,” said Dr. Rod Merrill, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Guelph. “They’re hungry and looking for food, and we’re often the food.” He added that 99 per cent of bacteria are helpful – like gut flora – so the battle is against the remaining one per cent.

The usual approach is to develop antibiotics “that kill the bacteria but not us, or the plant, or the animal,” stated Merrill. However, bacteria mutate quickly, as quickly as every 30 minutes, which leads to antibiotic resistance. “And unfortunately, the pipeline for new antibiotics is empty.”

The approach that Merrill and his research group are pursuing is an anti-virulence strategy – finding or designing small molecules that inhibit the tools bacteria use to colonize the host and create infection. “If we can put a lock on their weapons, they can’t get food and will move on so there’s not the same pressure to mutate. We’re going with this approach because we think it’s time to change up tactics.”

Image: Scabin crystals

Credit: CLS