Acta Crystallographica Section D

Biological Crystallography

Volume 62, Part 1 (January 2006)

research papers

Acta Cryst. (2006). D62, 12-18 [ doi:10.1107/S0907444905039570 ]

Instrumentation for synchrotron-radiation macromolecular crystallography

E. Girard, P. Legrand, O. Roudenko, L. Roussier, P. Gourhant, J. Gibelin, D. Dalle, M. Ounsy, A. W. Thompson, O. Svensson, M.-O. Cordier, S. Robin, R. Quiniou and J.-P. Steyer

Abstract: X-ray diffraction is an extremely important tool for structure determination of biological macromolecules, to the extent that currently around 85% of Protein Data Bank entries result from X-ray measurements. Many of these structure determinations use synchrotron radiation for data collection. This article aims to give synchrotron users an overview of the functioning of a synchrotron beamline and how the performance of various instruments combines to allow the collection of diffraction data.

Keywords: beamlines; optics; synchrotrons.