DESY is one of the world’s leading accelerator centres. Researchers use the large-scale facilities at DESY to explore the microcosm in all its variety – from the interactions of tiny elementary particles and the behaviour of new types of nanomaterials to biomolecular processes that are essential to life. The accelerators and detectors that DESY develops and builds are unique research tools. The facilities generate the world’s most intense X-ray light, accelerate particles to record energies and open completely new windows onto the universe.
P12 is an undulator beamline utilizing the wavelength range between 0.6 and 3 Å. The beamline is optimised for low background data collection from macromolecular solutions and kinetic experiments with high temporal resolution. The endstation is equipped with photon counting Pilatus and Eiger detectors, a robotic sample changer and in-line size-exclusion chromatography (SEC-SAXS) setups. P12 allows for fully automated and remote data acquisition and processing using the Beamline Meta Server software. Mail-in access is encouraged, both for sample changer and SEC-SAXS projects.
EMBL Hamburg operates two beamlines for macromolecular X-ray crystallography, P13 and P14, at the PETRA III storage ring at DESY (Hamburg, Germany) coordinated by Thomas R. Schneider. On P14, a second end-station “T-REXX” for pump-probe time-resolved crystallography is in operation since October 2018.
The SPC facility is located directly next to the EMBL beamlines at the PETRA III synchrotron. We offer a pipeline from the lab bench to our MX and SAXS beamlines, helping you to optimize and prepare your samples for structural studies.
High-Throughput Crystallization Facility
Our high-throughput crystallization laboratory offers initial crystallization screens from various suppliers as well as customized screens for optimization of initial hits, both suitable for soluble and membrane proteins. Drops are set with nanolitre dispensing robots; the TTP’s MOSQUITO equipped with an LCP (Lipidic Cubic Phase) module. Online observation of the plates is possible via the Crystallization Information Management System (CRIMS), which makes results available to users in real-time, along with all experimental parameters. We offer the CrystalDirect® technology, able to harvest protein crystals from 96-well CrystalDirectTM plates by means of laser photoablation.
The Multi-User Cryo-EM facility operated by the University of Hamburg is located within the Centre of Structural Systems Biology (CSSB) on the Science Campus Bahrenfeld, Hamburg, Germany. We support a variety of structural biology projects with a focus on host-pathogen interactions.
The facility has established efficient workflows primarily for the modalities of cryo-EM, i.e. cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET) and single particle analysis (SPA). The cryo-CLEM technique is being arranged through our close interaction with the CSSB Advanced Light and Fluorescence Microscopy (ALFM) facility.
EMBL Hamburg provides services and integrated facilities for structural biology available to external researchers. Among them, the microfocus beamline P14 for macromolecular crystallography produces powerful X-rays beams that enable researchers to determine the structure of molecules that present many technical challenges Here, Azadeh Shahsavar from the Danish Research Institute of Translational Neuroscience (DANDRITE) in Aarhus explains how the collaboration with EMBL Hamburg and its infrastructure enabled them to determine the molecular structure of glycine transporter 1. The finding could open new avenues for developing therapeutics for psychiatric disorders
Undulators are arrays of permanent magnets that are placed in an alternating pattern. When accelerated electrons enter an undulator, they begin to move in a zig-zag "slalom" course. With every turn, the electrons emit X-ray light. Because of the behaviour of the X-rays in relation to the light, and because of the pattern of the magnets in the undulator, the light that emerges is laserlike, with all of its waves in phase with each other.
The European XFEL comprises three different undulators—different light sources providing X-ray flashes with different properties—that generate light for the instruments in the facility's experiment hall.
The undulators comprise 5 m long segments aligned one behind the other with a distance of 1.1 m between them. These gaps between the segments contain devices used for electron beam diagnostics and control.
The strength of the magnetic fields in the undulators can be varied—a higher magnetic field resulting in a wider slalom course and thus in X-ray radiation with a longer wavelength.
