Oral Presentation The 35th Biennial Conference of the Society of Crystallographers in Australia and New Zealand 2024 (Crystal 35)

Biological Small Angle X-ray Scattering (113797)

Annmaree Warrender 1
  1. The Australian Synchrotron, ANSTO, Clayton, VIC, Australia

The Biological Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) beamline builds on the existing capabilities of the SAXS/WAXS beamline at the Australian Synchrotron. BioSAXS has been designed for studying nanoscale structures and molecular interactions in solution-based systems. Such dynamic studies have important utility in a range of fields, including structural biology and soft matter research. The SAXS technique is particularly useful in deciphering the in-solution structures of proteins or protein-oligo complexes to complement high-resolution structural data. Optimised beamline optics, including a high flux x-ray beam (<1014 ph/s), and dedicated sample environments improve the scattering signal of weakly scattering molecules and support the analysis of reduced sample concentrations. The most commonly utilised sample environment is the CoFlow Autoloader which offers automated processing of flowing solutions in either a high-throughput batch mode or with in-line size-exclusion chromatography for separation of homogeneous solutions. Scattering data is captured as the sample flows through a capillary in concert with a flowing sheath of buffer that protects the sample from radiation damage. Alternative setups for measuring scattering changes overtime include the Flowthrough Capillary and a Stopped-flow instrument. These will be utilized for measuring kinetics on the order of minutes to hours, or millisecond resolutions, respectively. This talk will provide an overview of the available experimental setups for solution-based SAXS experiments on BioSAXS, along with some example case studies of applying the SAXS technique to study biomolecular structures.