[ccp4bb] 4th Winter School on soft X-rays in Macromolecular Crystallography

[Gordon Leonard]

4th Winter School on soft X-rays in Macromolecular Crystallography
 
We are pleased to announce that the 4th Winter school on soft X-rays in Macromolecular Crystallography will take place at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Grenoble, France 6th – 8th February 2012.
 
An increasing number of new crystal structures of biological macromolecules structures are solved exploiting anomalous signals available at longer wavelengths. The main advantage of using longer wavelengths is that the anomalous signal from innate sulphur, phosphorous or other light atoms (e.g. Ca, K, Cl) can be used to obtain phasing information, thus obviating the need to prepare the derivative crystals usually used in macromolecular crystal structure solution. However, at longer wavelengths currently routinely accessible, such anomalous signals are rather small (usually ~ 1%).  Special care must thus be given to experimental setups and data collection protocols. The Winter School brings together experts in the hardware and software required to successfully perform such experiments. The following topics will be covered:
 
• Optimised experimental setups for diffraction data collection at longer wavelengths
• Advanced data collection strategies, taking into account radiation damage
• Optimised protocols of data processing for longer wavelength experiments
• Anomalous scattering substructure determination using longer wavelength X-rays
 
The Winter School will being held under the auspices of the ESRF Users’ Meeting and the number of participants limited to 20. Confirmed speakers at the workshop (see  http://www.esrf.fr/events/conferences/users-meeting-2012-workshops/mx-school ) for provisional program) include:
 
    M. Cianci, EMBL Hamburg, Germany
    K. Djinovic-Carugo, Vienna Biocenter, Austria
    D. de Sanctis, ESRF, Grenoble, France
    P. Johansson, AstraZeneca Structural Chemistry Laboratory, Molndal, Sweden
    J. Liu, National Laboratory of Biomacromolecules, Beijing, China
    R. Giordano, ESRF, Grenoble, France
    G. Leonard, ESRF, Grenoble, France
    C. Mueller-Dieckmann, ESRF Grenoble
    J. Pflugrath, Rigaku, USA
    A. Popov, ESRF, Grenoble, France
    I. Uson, IBMB-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain
    A. Wagner, Diamond Light Source, UK
    B.C. Wang, University of Georgia, USA
    M. Wang, Swiss Light Source Villigen, Switzerland
    M.S. Weiss, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Materialien und Energie, Germany
 
 
The Winter School registration fee of 150 € includes all meals, 4 nights’ accommodation in the ESRF Guesthouse as well as registration for the ESRF Users' Meeting ( http://www.esrf.fr/events/conferences/users-meeting-2012-workshops/preliminary-programme ).
 
Applications for participation in the Winter School should include a C.V., a letter of motivation, a poster abstract and (where appropriate) a recommendation letter from a PhD supervisor and be sent by Monday 12th December to the Winter School organisers at mx-winterschool2...@esrf.fr
 
Further information concerning the workshop and application procedures can be found at http://www.esrf.fr/events/conferences/users-meeting-2012-workshops/mx-school
 
On behalf of the organizers,
 
Gordon Leonard