Date
BioCAT held its tenth intensive HOW-TO course in BioSAXS from 12/10/24-12/13/24 with 37 remote participants. There were four days of lectures and hands-on software tutorials on the basics of BioSAXS data collection and processing from expert practitioners in the field. Participants could elect to mail in samples for data collection prior to the course, and roughly half of them sent research samples and were able to analyze their own data as part of the workshop.
Some of the participants and instructors at the Everything BioSAXS 10 Workshop.

BioCAT held its tenth BioSAXS training course from 12/10/24-12/13/24. There were 37 remote participants and 7 instructors. The workshop was held entirely online, via Zoom, for ~5 hours each day.

Day one started off with an excellent overview of the basic physics of SAXS and what kind of information you can obtain from the technique by Dr. Thomas Weiss (BL4-2 beamline, SSRL). This was followed by a talk from Dr. Jesse Hopkins (BioCAT) on the basics of SAXS instrumentation and different types of SAXS experiments. Dr. Kushol Gupta (Penn. State) then discussed the extremely important and sometimes overlooked steps of how to actually plan and perform SAXS experiments. He covered everything from planning what data you want to collect to sample preparation for the experiment, to complementary biophysical techniques for verifying your results. Following that Dr. Hopkins gave a lecture covering the details on what a scattering profile is and basic SAXS data analysis and validation. The first day ended with a Q&A with Drs. Weiss, Gupta, Hopkins, and Dr. Max Watkins (BioCAT) and the participants.

Day two started with an overview of SAXS data processing software by Dr. Hopkins. Then the workshop broke into smaller groups, and students spent several hours working through detailed self-guided tutorials that took them through basic SAXS data processing and validation. Each small group had an expert available to answer any questions that came up. Participants then returned to the large group, and Dr. Estella Yee (MacCHESS, CHESS) gave a talk on SEC-SAXS, describing what it is, why it’s useful, how to analyze the data, common issues, and some advanced analysis methods. The rest of the day was spent in the small groups working on a tutorial covering SEC-SAXS data analysis.

Day three started with a talk by Dr. Tom Grant (U. Buffalo) about calculating theoretical SAXS profiles from models and reconstructing 3D models from SAXS data. Dr. Watkins then gave a talk on best practices for publishing SAXS data. This was followed by a talk from Dr. Kushol Gupta (Penn. State) on the application of SAXS to lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) and how coupled asymmetric flow field-flow fractionation (AF4) can be used to improve the analysis of these particles, a separation technique that is now available coupled to SAXS (AF4-MALS-SAXS) at BioCAT. The rest of the day was spent in small groups doing a tutorial on 3D reconstructions and calculating theoretical SAXS profiles from models.

Day four started with a series of lectures on advanced applications and analysis of SAXS data. Dr. Hopkins started with a talk about analyzing flexible and disordered systems using SAXS, with a particular focus on ensemble analysis methods. Dr. Watkins then gave a lecture introducing the principles and practice of rigid body modeling with SAXS data. Dr. Michal Hammel (SIBYLS beamline, ALS) then gave a talk about using their SAXS and MD coupled analysis tools, particularly BilboMD, and new advancements in incorporating predicted structures from AlphaFold. Finally, Dr. Hopkins gave a lecture on time resolved SAXS and how and what you can do with the technique at BioCAT. The workshop finished with a brief lecture from Dr. Hopkins on the practical steps to apply for beamtime at BioCAT, and a large group Q&A with Drs. Hopkins and Watkins.