molecular properties – Page 2

X-ray crystallography at the Australian Synchrotron contributed to major research findings.

Data collected on the macromolecular crystallography beamlines at the Australian Synchrotron has contributed to major research findings on two deadly viruses, Hendra and Nipah, found in Australia, Asia and Africa. The viruses can be transmitted to humans not directly by the bat which is the natural carrier but by an infected animal like horses or pigs.

Beamline scientist, Dr David Aragao (pictured above), a co-author on the paper in Nature Communications, said that obtaining a clear motion picture of key biological process at the molecular level of viruses is often not available with current biomedical techniques.
“However, using X-ray crystallography from data collected on both MX1 and MX2 beamlines at the Australian Synchrotron, we were able to obtain 8 ‘photograph-like’ snapshots of the molecular process that allows the Hendra and Nipah virus to replicate.“

Two authors of the paper, PhD students Kate Smith and Sofiya Tsimbalyuk, who are co-supervised by Aragao and his collaborator Professor of Biochemistry Jade Forwood of the Graham Centre for Agricultural Innovation Charles Sturt University, used the Synchrotron extensively collecting multiple data sets that required extensive refinements over two years to isolate the mechanism of interest.

Image: Beamline scientist, Dr David Aragao.

Berkeley Lab scientists developing new system to identify cell differences.

By shining highly focused infrared light on living cells, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) hope to unmask individual cell identities, and to diagnose whether the cells are diseased or healthy.
They will use their technique to produce detailed, color-based maps of individual cells and collections of cells – in microscopic and eventually nanoscale detail – that will be analyzed using machine-learning techniques to automatically sort out cell characteristics.

Using microscopic color maps to unlock cell identity

Their focus is on developing a rapid way to easily identify cell types, and features within cells, to aid in biological and medical research by providing a way to probe living cells in their native environment without harming the cells or requiring obtrusive cell-labeling techniques.
“This is totally noninvasive,” said Cynthia McMurray, a biochemist and senior scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division who is leading this new imaging effort with Michael Martin, a physicist and senior staff scientist at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS).
The ALS has dozens of beamlines that produce beams of intensely focused light, from infrared to X-rays, for a broad range of experiments.

Image: From left to right: Aris Polyzos, Edward Barnard, and Lila Lovergne, pictured here at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, are part of a research team that is developing a cell-identification technique based on infrared imaging and machine learning.
Credit: Marilyn Chung/Berkeley Lab

Tag: molecular properties

Snaphot of molecular mechanism at work in lethal virus

X-ray crystallography at the Australian Synchrotron contributed to major research findings.

Infrared beams show cell types in a different light

Berkeley Lab scientists developing new system to identify cell differences.