High Brightness Beam for Microcrystallography at GM/CA@APS

GM/CA is a world leader in the development of microcrystallography capabilities for biological macromolecules. The combination of the GM/CA-developed quad-mini-beam collimator and advanced rastering and vector collect software tools have revolutionized microcrystallography. Recently, beamline 23ID-B was reconfigured by shifting the focusing optics 3.8 m downstream. This significantly increased the source demagnification and led to a 4-fold increase in the 5- and 10-micron beam intensity. Beamline 23ID-D is also being upgraded. A Pilatus3-6M with a 1.0 mm thick X-ray sensor was commissioned in January 2014 allowing shutterless data collection with high S/N. The detector specifications include 100 Hz frame rate, 10 MHz/pixel count rate, and high X-ray efficiency. The beamline optics and endstation are also being upgraded to provide a high intensity beam whose size can be variable rapidly in the range of 1 - 20 micron, a new air bearing goniometer with a sphere-of-confusion (SOC) of ~100 nm, a miniature sample XYZ stage that allows centering and scanning of a micron-sized crystal, and a new on-axis-visualization system that provides high resolution optical images of sample crystals. Plans are being developed to upgrade the Advance Photon Source storage ring with a Multi-Bend Achromat lattice. The source properties will be dramatically improved primarily by reducing the horizontal source size to be comparable to the vertical source size, resulting in a 2-3 orders of magnitude increase in source brightness. Both beamlines will be significantly improved by the source upgrade. Moreover the new microfocusing optics for 23ID-D will fully exploit the new source and could deliver a 500 nm (FWHM) beam with >2e13 photons/sec. This unprecedented flux density will provide new opportunities and challenges, and allow the study some of the most important problems in biology. Details of these developments will be presented.

Integration and first data with a Pilatus3 6M at APS beamline 23ID-D

GM/CA@APS operates two insertion-device beamlines, 23ID-B and 23ID-D, and one bending magnet beamline, 23BM-B, in sector 23 of the Advanced Photon Source. We recently integrated a Pilatus3 6M detector - a new generation of large sensitive area detectors based on pixel array detector technology and marketed by Dectris. The sensitive area of the device is 423.6 mm × 434.6 mm. The Pilatus3 features the newly implemented re-triggering mechanism that increases the count-rate capabilities by almost an order of magnitude compared to previous generation Pilatus detectors. The detector installed on beamline 23ID-D is the first Pilatus3 6M with a 1000-micron thick sensor, offering higher efficiency at energies above 12 keV. The fast read-out (0.95 ms) and high speed (up to 100 Hz) of the detector allow shutterless data collection. The detector has been fully integrated into the JBluIce user interface and data processing pipeline at GM/CA. Systematic studies with protein crystals were carried out in order to optimize data collection parameters. Overall data collection speed (frame rate), oscillation width per frame, spindle axis speed, and re-triggering have been studied. Different sets of optimal parameters have been established for crystallographic data collection and for crystal screening with the raster feature (grid scanning). The results of these studies and of performance measurements will be presented. This project and GM/CA @ APS are supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and Cancer Institute of NIH.

Remote Access Capabilities at the GM/CA Beamlines at the APS

The GM/CA facility consists of two undulator source beamlines and a bending magnet beamline at the Advanced Photon Source (APS). Access to the operation of these beamlines is accomplished through visits by investigators who are either on-site, remote or a combination of the two. In all modes of access, user operations are controlled by the experimenter. The control and capabilities of the GM/CA beamlines are identical for remote and on-site users. Remote access to the beamlines is through NX or Teamviewer to local computers [1]. Once communication has been established, experienced GM/CA experimenters are greeted by our familiar JBluIce, the graphical user interface/control program[2] responsible for all operations from sample handling through data collection and reduction. Although investigators always see a familiar interface, both software and hardware on the beamlines are continually improving. Recent hardware upgrades include a shift of the optical focusing mirrors on the ID-B beamline closer to the sample to provide a significant increase in flux, and installation of a new Pilatus3 6M detector on ID-D, the second undulator beamline. The JBluIce program has incorporated new detector controls for shutterless operation while continuing to expand the features of rastering, vector (helical) data collection, strategy tools and data analysis. These tools have been essential to investigators working on membrane crystal samples, e.g. GPCRs, as well as for samples that decay quickly or require data to be collected from multiple crystals. The presentation will provide an overview of beamline remote control as well as an update of the equipment that it operates at GM/CA.