Tag: Latest-News

New malaria vaccine shows promise in preclinical trials

New malaria vaccine shows promise in preclinical trials

International research team used CLS to map structure of human antibodies bound to their prototype vaccine.

Malaria is caused by a parasite that is spread to humans by infected mosquitoes. In 2024, almost 282 million people worldwide were infected and 610,000 died, according to the World Health Organization. Malaria is a leading cause of death in children under the age of five.

Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS) at the University of Saskatchewan, an international team involving researchers from Canada, the US, and the Netherlands have developed a novel vaccine that is showing considerable promise in preclinical trials.Video: New malaria vaccine shows promise in preclinical trials

“Our long-term goal is to eliminate malaria by designing a vaccine that is more effective than the ones currently on the market,” says lead author Danton Ivanochko, a researcher at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids) in Toronto.

When the researchers examined blood samples from people with naturally acquired immunity to malaria, they were able to identify which proteins on the parasite play the largest role in transmission.

Read more on the CLS website

Chemical shifts help track molecules breaking apart in real time

Chemical shifts help track molecules breaking apart in real time

Ultrafast X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy at European XFEL offers a new way to watch reactions, atom by atom.

When molecules fall apart, their electric charge doesn’t stay put—it rearranges as bonds stretch and break. An international team of scientists has now tracked these ultrafast changes in the small molecule fluoromethane (CH₃F). It was the first time that the Small Quantum Systems (SQS) instrument at European XFEL could deliver detailed insights into transient states during chemical reactions. These intermediate states, that only exist temporarily while the reaction is ongoing, are often the key drivers of chemistry and therefore crucial to understand. Over the long term, that kind of insight can support progress in areas such as atmospheric science (where sunlight-driven reactions and fragmentation pathways shape air chemistry), as well as the study of complex molecular systems including biomolecules and proteins, where local excitation and charge transfer can trigger structural change.

In the experiment, the researchers first triggered the reaction with an optical laser pulse. Next, they used the X-ray laser pulses that the European XFEL produces, to eject an electron from the core of either the fluorine or the carbon atom in the molecule. They measured the electron’s kinetic energy, which reveals how strongly it was bound inside the atom. That binding energy is extremely sensitive to the local electrical environment, producing so-called “chemical shifts” that act like a fingerprint of the charge distribution surrounding the atom from which the electron has been ejected. With an overall time resolution of about 35 femtoseconds (trillions of times shorter than the blink of an eye), the team could follow changes separately at two atomic sites, carbon and fluorine, inside the same molecule. The method is called time-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (tr‑XPS).

“Core-level photoelectron spectroscopy tells us what is happening at a specific atom,” says Michael Meyer, lead scientist at the Small Quantum Systems (SQS) instrument at European XFEL. “By probing carbon and fluorine independently, we can see when different fragments appear and how the charge distribution evolves during dissociation. 

Read more on the European XFEL website

Image: Illustration of the pump–probe experiment on fluoromethane (CH₃F): Shortly after an ultrashort optical laser pulse (red) has ionized the molecule and triggered bond breaking, a femtosecond X-ray pulse (blue/white) ejects a core electron (green clouds) from the fluorine atom (green ball). By measuring the electron’s kinetic energy, the experiment tracks time-dependent ‘chemical shifts’ that reveal how the local electronic environment changes as the molecule dissociates – in this case the departure of a hydrogen atom (white ball).

Credit: Illustration: European XFEL

When carbon and nitrogen meet under pressure

When carbon and nitrogen meet under pressure

Three recent papers expand understanding of chemistry relevant to biology and industry

When it comes to the chemical elements, few are simultaneously as ubiquitous and necessary as carbon and nitrogen. They form the backbone of life, they enable many catalytic processes used in industry, they lie at the heart of many key materials in our everyday lives, and they make up over 78% of the composition of our atmosphere (almost all of that amount being nitrogen). Their chemistry has been widely studied for centuries, forming the foundation of organic chemistry and revealing entire libraries’ worth of reactions across inorganic chemistry. That chemistry forms the basis for common methods in mining, electroplating, pharmacology, and much more. But an international research team led by scientists at the Goethe University Frankfurt have shown that this familiar picture only accounts for a small fraction of what carbon and nitrogen can do—one just has to turn up the heat and the pressure. A series of studies published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) and Angewandte Chemie International Edition reveal that under high pressure, carbon and nitrogen can simultaneously react with a variety of metals. The results could have a strong influence on future functional materials.

Carbon and nitrogen from very stable compounds. Molecular nitrogen N2 in the atmosphere, in particular, forms triple bonds that require a large amount of energy to break, and solid elemental carbon can be arranged to make diamonds, among the hardest and most corrosion-resistant compounds known. While carbon and nitrogen do react at ambient pressure forming cyanogen (CN)2  – a colorless toxic gas — their behavior can completely change under high pressure.  

However, the studies ley by scientists from the Goethe University Frankfurt revealed new pathways to make novel carbon-nitrogen anions through the use of extreme pressures. By pressing the reacting substances between two diamonds—in a device called a diamond anvil cell—while simultaneously heating the reactants at high precision using lasers, the team could get the nitrogen and carbon to bond together forming negatively charged ions, which are stabilized in novel compounds with positively-charged metallic ions.

Image: Using diamond anvil cells and laser heating, the research team has been able to produce new kinds of chemical reactions with ultra-stable carbon and nitrogen atoms, allowing them to form novel compounds with metals such as bismuth, cadmium, calcium, and europium.

Credit: Goethe University Frankfurt

Read more on DESY website

The study of Gallo-Roman curse tablets discovered in Orléans continues at the PSICHÉ beamline

The study of Gallo-Roman curse tablets discovered in Orléans continues at the PSICHÉ beamline

After conducting a first series of highly conclusive test measurements in October 2024 on the PSICHE beamline, two archaeologists from the Archaeology Department of the City of Orléans returned in December 2025 with the aim of accessing the texts inscribed on 17 Gallo-Roman curse tablets. Their five intense days of X-ray microtomography on PSICHE have already yielded a wealth of results.

In Orléans, as part of the redevelopment of the former Porte Madeleine hospital, a previously unknown Gallo-Roman necropolis was uncovered thanks to two successive archaeological excavation campaigns carried out between 2022 and 2025. During these excavations, 23 Gallo-Roman lead curse tablets (defixiones, from the Latin defixio, meaning curse or spell) were discovered in the graves, some folded in half, others completely rolled up on themselves.

In order to access the texts engraved on these fragile and precious objects, a few rare tablets were able to be opened, with great expertise and care and following a stabilisation treatment, by a conservator-restorer. However, in most cases, examination of the tablets showed that opening them manually would risk damaging them and, with them, the unique texts they bear.

Yet, using X-ray microtomography, the PSICHÉ beamline team succeeded in 2023 in virtually unrolling a 1,700-year-old lead talisman, revealing an engraved text in the Mandaean language that could then be deciphered.

Read more on the SOLEIL website

Image: At the PSICHÉ beamline workstation, meticulous preparation of the X-ray microtomography scan of a curse tablet

Credit: © SAVO, 2025

Synchrotron light reveals how a plant enzyme reshapes sugars to drive essential biological reactions

Synchrotron light reveals how a plant enzyme reshapes sugars to drive essential biological reactions

Using XALOC beamline at ALBA, researchers from the Institute of Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems (BIFI), at the University of Zaragoza, have discovered an unexpected way in which a plant enzyme activates sugars during a fundamental biochemical reaction. The findings, published in Nature Communications, challenge long-standing assumptions about how glycosyltransferase enzymes work and provide new foundations for biotechnological innovation.

Sugar-modifying enzymes play a central role in life. They control how sugars are attached to proteins and other molecules, a process that influences cell communication, development, immunity and responses to stress. In plants, these reactions are essential for building cell walls and regulating growth, while in humans similar enzymes are linked to disease processes and the effectiveness of therapeutic antibodies. Understanding exactly how these enzymes work at the molecular level is crucial not only for basic biology, but also for improving biomedicine, agriculture and industrial biotechnology.

The study of this group from BIFI at the University of Zaragoza focuses on FUT11, a fucosyltransferase enzyme from the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Glycosyltransferases such as FUT11 catalyse the formation of glycosidic bonds by transferring a sugar from a donor molecule to an acceptor. Traditionally, scientists assumed that during this reaction the acceptor sugar remained largely passive, maintaining a stable shape while the enzyme activated the donor. Using high-resolution structural data collected at the XALOC beamline – one of the ALBA’s instruments for X-ray crystallography-, the researchers were able to visualise FUT11 bound to its substrates and discovered a very different picture.

The crystal structures collected at ALBA (BL13 XALOC) provided the structural framework for mechanistic interpretation, and the accompanying atomistic simulations indicated that FUT11 actively promotes a transient distortion (puckering) of the acceptor sugar ring away from its most stable chair conformation. In these simulations, the catalytic base—Glu158—acts not only as the proton abstractor but also as a conformational effector: its interactions bias the innermost GlcNAc into a reactive, puckered state that better aligns the acceptor hydroxyl for nucleophilic attack and efficient bond formation.

Read more on the ALBA website

Image: Researchers Víctor Taleb, María Bort, Ramón Hurtado from BIFI

Credit: Unizar

Cheaper, greener steel for the automotive industry

Cheaper, greener steel for the automotive industry

Finnish researchers develop new composition, manufacturing process for producing stronger steel

Automakers today use a special type of steel (called Advanced High-Strength Steel, or AHSS) in components critical to driver and passenger safety, such as safety cages and bumpers. These parts of the car are designed to absorb collision forces so that less impact is transferred to occupants.

Researchers in Finland have developed not only a new composition for this type of steel but also a new manufacturing process that produces a stronger steel while also making it cheaper and more environmentally friendly. Their findings are published in the journal Materials & Design.

“We wanted to know: can we make steels that are two or three times stronger than current formulations, so we can reduce the amount of steel required and lower the overall weight of a vehicle?”  says Roohallah Aliabad, a researcher at the Microstructure and Mechanisms research group (Centre for Advanced Steels Research) at the University of Oulu. “A byproduct of this research is reducing greenhouse gas emissions. When you reduce the weight of cars, you are indirectly contributing to that goal.”

Aliabad and his colleagues are investigating compositions and processing routes that use manganese as an alloying element. Manganese is significantly less expensive than chromium and nickel, which are traditionally used in steel alloys. The team found that, by tailoring the microstructure of their steel, they could create an ultra strong, non-uniform microstructure (controlled heterogeneity) that contains two types of austenite, a form of iron.

Read more on the CLS website

Image: Roohalah Aliabad, Centre for Advanced Steels Research, University of Oulu (Finland)

Faster, smarter X‑ray spectroscopy with AI

Faster, smarter X‑ray spectroscopy with AI

Artificial intelligence makes X‑ray spectroscopy five times faster, smarter and less prone to human error

Argonne team’s AI-driven method takes over the manual parts of advanced X-ray spectroscopy, reducing human error and boosting experimental speed.#

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming nearly every branch of science. And researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory are helping lead the way.

“There is a lot of hype around AI today in the media,” said Mathew Cherukara, a computational scientist and group leader at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source (APS), a DOE Office of Science user facility. ​“Yet there is no question that AI can help researchers at APS and other light sources make breakthroughs in advanced chemical processes critical to American industry.”

As proof, the Argonne team has developed an AI-guided method that dramatically speeds up a widely used X-ray technique known as X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy. It does so with far less risk of human error or damage to the sample from the X-ray beams.

This powerful analytical tool reveals the hidden chemistry inside materials important to modern life, such as batteries, catalysts and materials through which electricity flows without resistance. The team’s AI approach cuts the number of measurements previously needed by as much as 80%, with no loss of accuracy. The result is a dramatic shortening of data acquisition duration, allowing researchers to capture fast chemical changes in real time.

“Yet there is no question that AI can help researchers at APS and other light sources make breakthroughs in advanced chemical processes critical to American industry.” – Mathew Cherukara, computational scientist and group leader at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source

Here’s how XANES works: Scientists shine X-ray beams with increasing energy onto a material. Each X-ray beam is a tiny packet of energy. When the energy is high enough to knock a tightly bound electron out of an atom, the material suddenly absorbs more X-rays. This sharp jump in absorption is called the absorption edge.

By tracking how X-ray absorption changes before, during and after this edge, researchers can watch the chemistry of a specific element unfold within a material, from how a metallic catalyst reacts with other chemicals to how the charge state of a battery element changes during cycling.

“XANES is incredibly powerful, but until now, scientists had to make dozens or even hundreds of choices about where to measure and how long to measure at each X-ray energy level,” said Shelly Kelly, an APS physicist and group leader.

Image: Artistic rendering shows new AI-guided approach capturing absorption edge from atomic structure of material analyzed by XANES at a light source.

Credit: Argonne National Laboratory

Read more on Argonne website

Bringing cryo-correlative hard X-ray microscopy to life science

Bringing cryo-correlative hard X-ray microscopy to life science

Scientists led by the ESRF, UGA and INSERM have developed cryo-correlative nano-imaging, a new technique that combines lab cryo-fluorescence microscopy, cryo X-ray fluorescence nanoimaging and phase-contrast nano-tomography on ID16A. The results are published in ACS Nano.

Biologists have long wanted to answer a deceptively simple question: what are the structures we see inside cells actually made of? Visible light fluorescence microscopy shows where organelles are, but not their chemical composition. Hard X-rays can map the chemistry but do not necessarily see the organelles. Cryo-correlative nanoprobe work remains rare, particularly for 3D elemental imaging of whole frozen cells.

A new study at ID16A beamline of the ESRF offers a practical solution. An international team has developed an integrated cryogenic workflow that links laboratory cryo-fluorescence microscopy to targeted cryo X-ray fluorescence (XRF) nano-imaging and phase-contrast nano-tomography.

With this new method, they have tracked therapeutic nanoparticles from the European ScanNtreat project as they moved through cancer cells, showing both where the particles went and what happened to them.

The first author of the publication, Dmitry Karpov, former ESRF scientist and now researcher at the Université Grenoble Alpes, explains how this new development can lead to applications: “This is an example of what the ESRF aims to do: to turn cutting-edge instrumentation into discoveries with direct impact on people’s lives, in this case for medicine and life sciences”.

Read more on the ESRF website

New JUNGFRAU detector in action for MX at Diamond

New JUNGFRAU detector in action for MX at Diamond

As part of the BBSRC ALERT funding scheme, Diamond recently secured a £1.3M award for a state-of-the-art JUNGFRAU 9M detector to support Diamond’s Microfocus Macromolecular Crystallography beamline I24. This new generation of detector will facilitate a leap forward in time-resolved structural biology research for Diamond’s users. The detector will allow access to much faster timescales – as fast as microseconds – than was previously impossible with the existing detectors in use.

The detector has now been installed at beamline I24 and the first ‘real-world’ data collected. The quality of the data recorded is excellent and even ahead of upcoming upgrades to the beamline, excellent data could be collected at 1 and 2 kHz.

The Jungfrau detector is an exciting addition to the beamline. The high quality of the first data collected are extremely encouraging and illustrate the gains the detector will provide for fast experiments at I24. Operation of the detector was made possible by multiple teams including designers, detector and software scientists, technicians, and beamline staff working together to get the JF9M up and running in a very tight timeframe.

Robin Owen, I24 Principal Beamline Scientist

The new detector brings challenges, not least the huge volume of data that can be generated. This will be addressed in part by high power on-beamline processing using NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip nodes. The GH200 are powerful CPU-GPU hybrid machines that are powerful enough to both reconstruct the 45 GB/s Jungfrau9M images, crystallographically process, and assess them for data quality in real-time.

Read more on the Diamond website

Image: Jungfrau 9M detector in-situ at I24 with a section of an exemplar diffraction image collected at 1 kHz from a human deacetylase and resulting electron density obtained from a single crystal at 100 K

President of the Federal Republic of Germany visits SESAME laboratory

President of the Federal Republic of Germany visits SESAME laboratory

During a state visit to Jordan today, His Excellency Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President of the Federal Republic of Germany, took time out to visit the SESAME laboratory north-west of the capital Amman. In November last year, Germany announced its intention to become an Associate Member of SESAME, cementing the country’s already long-standing support for the Laboratory. At the end of his visit, the President signed the Laboratory’s guest book, in the company of SESAME Director Dr Khaled Toukan and young researchers from across the region: “I am fascinated by the succeeding cooperation of so many countries in the Middle East and worldwide. This important work of researchers shows what a treasure international cooperation to the benefit of all of us is. Germany continues to support this place of science in the years to come.”

Germany’s relationship with SESAME goes back to the origins of the laboratory. It was the donation of the BESSY I synchrotron that allowed the fledgling SESAME to establish itself as an intergovernmental organisation in 2004. BESSY I components today form the injector for the SESAME main ring accelerator. Germany has been an Observer to the SESAME Council since its establishment in 2004.

Read more on the SESAME website

Image: H.E. Frank-Walter Steinmeier and H.E. Khaled Toukan with the scientists at the ID11L-HESEB and ID11R-TXPES beamlines.

Credit: © SESAME 2026

Capturing Ghosts

Capturing Ghosts

Quantum “ghost imaging” technique paves the way for nanoscale-resolution images at a lower X-ray dose.

A group of researchers led by scientists at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, is exploring a quantum-inspired imaging approach that could set the stage for obtaining high-resolution data while reducing X-ray exposure. The method relies on pairs of quantum-entangled X-ray photons, linked particles of light from the same origin that share properties and information. In each entangled pair, one photon interacts with a sample while its partner does not. By analyzing these pairs, the team demonstrated that information carried by the untouched photon can be used to form an image, complementing information obtained from its partner. This early proof of concept could ultimately enable longer, lower-dose studies of delicate biological materials, such as plant tissues, and may one day inform lower-dose medical imaging. Their results were published in Optica.

Seeing “ghosts”

Quantum “ghost” imaging is a technique that is as intriguing as its name suggests. In conventional X-ray imaging, X-ray photons directly interact with the sample being studied. Ghost imaging, instead, uses pairs of photons that are created together and share linked properties, known as quantum correlations. One photon from each pair travels through the sample, while its partner never interacts with it at all. Despite this, the untouched photon behaves as if it has encountered the sample.

Read more on the BNL website

Image: A conceptual schematic of “ghost imaging” displays the samples being imaged, which include a cat-shaped tungsten test pattern and an E. cardamomum seed. The objects are placed inside a ring on the lower two detector chips, while the upper chips are left open. By measuring paired X-ray signals at the same time, the system produces two matching images.

Credit: Valerie A. Lentz/Brookhaven National Laboratory

Measuring time at the quantum level

Measuring time at the quantum level

Physicists using the Swiss Light Source SLS have found a way to measure the time involved in quantum events and found it depends on the symmetry of the material.

“The concept of time has troubled philosophers and physicists for thousands of years, and the advent of quantum mechanics has not simplified the problem,” says Hugo Dil, a physicist at Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and professor at EPFL. “The central problem is the general role of time in quantum mechanics, and especially the timescale associated with a quantum transition.”

Quantum events, like tunnelling, or an electron changing its state by absorbing a photon, happen at mind‑bending speeds. Some take only a few tens of attoseconds (10-18 seconds), which is so short that light would not even cross the width of a small virus.

But measuring time intervals this small is notoriously difficult, also because any external timing tool can distort the very thing we want to observe. “Although the 2023 Nobel prize in physics shows we can access such short times, the use of such an external time scale risks to induce artefacts,” says Dil. “This challenge can be resolved by using quantum interference methods, based on the link between accumulated phase and time.”

Measuring quantum time without an external clock

Dil and his team from EPFL have now led research that has developed a way to accurately measure time in quantum events. When electrons absorb a photon and leave a material, they carry information in the form of their spin, which changes depending on how the underlying quantum process unfolds. By reading these tiny changes, the researchers could infer how long the transition takes, without ever using an external clock.

Read more on the PSI website

Image: Quantum events can unfold on attosecond timescales, making them notoriously difficult to measure. Researchers have now devised a way to measure the duration of quantum transitions without relying on an external clock.

Credit: © EPFL 2026/iStock (bymuratdeniz)

Filming a vitamin B12 photoreceptor in action

Filming a vitamin B12 photoreceptor in action

Using X-ray free-electron lasers and synchrotron light at facilities in Switzerland, Japan, France and the UK, a worldwide collaboration of scientists have discovered how a vitamin B12-based photoreceptor works. Understanding how photoreceptors function aids future technological applications, such as optogenetics, that involve controlling cellular processes with light. The findings are published in Nature.

Vitamin B12 is an organometallic cofactor found in many enzymes that control essential processes in various organisms, including humans. It came as a surprise a decade ago that vitamin B12 derivatives had been repurposed for light sensing by a large family of previously unknown photoreceptors in bacteria that fulfil various functions. 

The prototypical B12 photoreceptor CarH, for example, regulates the expression of genes involved in protecting bacteria against excess sunlight. It achieves this by binding to DNA in the dark, acting as a molecular doorstop. Upon illumination, its tetrameric architecture breaks apart, enabling transcription by unbinding from DNA. 

The way in which this and other B12 photoreceptors function at a molecular level has remained a mystery ever since. However, an international consortium led by scientists at the Institut de Biologie Structurale in Grenoble, France has now combined experimental techniques using X-ray free-electron lasers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in Switzerland (SwissFEL) and Japan (SACLA), as well as the synchrotrons in France (ESRF) and the UK (Diamond Light Source), with quantum-chemical calculations to uncover the inner workings of CarH.

Read more on the PSI website

Image: John Beale is responsible for macromolecular crystallography at the Cristallina experimental station of SwissFEL

Credit: © Paul Scherrer Institute PSI / Markus Fische

European XFEL celebrates a successful restart

European XFEL celebrates a successful restart

European XFEL today celebrated the restart of the world’s largest X-ray laser with a ceremony attended by Hamburg’s Senator for Science Maryam Blumenthal and Guido Wendt, State Secretary in Schleswig-Holstein’s Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Culture. This was preceded by a so-called Long Installation and Maintenance Period (LIMP) with maintenance work and numerous upgrades to the infrastructure in underground tunnels and the scientific instruments on the European XFEL campus.

Employees of European XFEL and DESY, who were significantly involved in the extensive work, watched as Blumenthal and Wendt started the electron accelerator with a click of a mouse. Electron packets now speed again through the accelerator section to the so-called dump after about two-thirds of the 3.4-kilometre-long facility. The remaining parts of the X-ray laser, where the X-ray light is generated using the accelerated electrons, and the experiment stations will go into operation in the coming days and weeks. After more than seven months, the facility will be available to researchers again from mid-April.

Innovations for scientific excellence

At the ceremony in the Lighthouse visitor centre, European XFEL Managing Director Prof. Thomas Feurer emphasized the importance of the modification and upgrade work for the long-term performance, reliability and scientific excellence of the large-scale research facility. In addition to the successful maintenance work, for which the accelerator, which normally operates at minus 271 degrees Celsius, was warmed to room temperature and then cooled down again, teams from European XFEL and the DESY research centre installed numerous technical innovations to further expand the research options at the X-ray laser. Important upgrades include the new GUN5 electron source, which enables a pulse rate that is around 30 percent higher, and the expansion of beamlines and instruments for attosecond experiments, which can be used to observe ultrafast processes such as the formation of chemical bonds. In addition, preparatory work has been completed for the installation of superconducting undulators, which will deliver particularly short and highly intense X-ray pulses with very short wavelengths, enabling researchers to achieve even better resolution, among other things.

Read more on the European XFEL website

Image: Thomas Feurer emphasized the smooth cooperation between European XFEL and DESY, involving many teams from different disciplines.

Credit: European XFEL

ESRF X-rays capture vitamin B12 sensing light

ESRF X-rays capture vitamin B12 sensing light

Scientists led by the Institut de Biologie Structurale have combined advanced X-ray methods to unveil how a photoreceptor regulates carotenoid production in bacteria, including experiments at the ESRF. The results are out in Nature.

CarH is a photoreceptor which senses light through a vitamin B12 derivative and regulates carotenoid expression through direct interaction with genes. Bacteria use this remarkable machinery to regulate gene expression and produce carotenoid to protect themselves from photo-damage upon sun exposure. What scientists had never seen before was how tiny photoinduced changes at the vitamin B12 level, propagate into large-scale structural changes triggering a biological response. Now, an international collaboration has managed to film this process in unprecedented detail, with key experiments carried out at the ESRF and at XFELs.

CarH’s role has been clear since around 2015. In the dark, the protein binds to DNA and blocks the production of carotenoids. When light is present, CarH releases the DNA, allowing the cell to produce carotenoids that help defend against light-induced damage.

Previous crystal structures revealed the start and end points of this process. But the crucial missing piece was the journey in between — from the short-lived structural changes that occur immediately after light hits the vitamin B12 molecule to the large-scale conformational changes involving the whole protein structure and its interaction with DNA.

Read more on the ESRF website

Image credit: CEA and Maria Davila Miliani

Argonne celebrates successful completion of the APS Upgrade

Argonne celebrates successful completion of the APS Upgrade

The U.S. Department of Energy has granted its final approval to the project, bringing the decade-plus-long effort to a close

The upgraded APS is now the brightest synchrotron X-ray light source in the world, and extraordinary new scientific experiments are underway.

The comprehensive upgrade of the Advanced Photon Source (APS) is officially completed.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has given its final approval to the APS Upgrade Project, an $815 million effort to transform the APS into the brightest synchrotron X-ray facility in the world. The effort has taken more than a decade to plan and complete and has resulted in a facility with unprecedented capabilities for scientific discovery. The APS is a DOE Office of Science user facility at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory.

The upgraded APS now generates X-ray beams that are up to 500 times brighter than before and sports nine new experiment stations (called beamlines) built to take full advantage of those enhanced beams. Scientists have been using the revamped facility for more than a year, exploring its new capabilities for research into more durable materials (for airplane turbines and other high-stress uses), longer-lasting batteries (for laptops and cell phones) and microelectronics (for our device-driven modern lives).

Read more on the Argonne website

Image: Advanced Photon Source

Credit: Argonne National Laboratory