How to get fiber beamtime during the APS-U Dark Period

Overview

The BioCAT 18ID beamline will be unavailable from April 17 2023 to late 2024/early 2025 due to the APS-U dark period. During that period we plan to offer the opportunity to perform a limited number of experiments on other synchrotron facilities.

BioCAT supported beamtime

Every few months BioCAT will work with a different beamline to schedule about a week of time at the beamline. For muscle diffraction experiments, BioCAT will solicit interest from our users, help them plan the experiments, and BioCAT will submit a proposal on the user’s behalf to other facility for a contiguous block of time for ta selected set of experiments. A BioCAT scientist will travel to the facility during that block to help support our users’ experiments. We will also assist them after the experiment with data processing/analysis as needed. These experiments will be done at beamline BL4-2 at SSRL or at MacCHESS at CHESS.

If you want to know more about this BioCAT supported time at other facilities contact Weikang Ma.

Options for Fiber Diffraction at other facilities not supported by BioCAT

General fiber diffraction experiments are supported at beamline BL4-2 at SSRL and the LiX beamline at NSLS II. Users interested in performing such experiments should contact beamline staff for procedures and submit proposals for beamtime through the SSRL and NSLS II proposal systems.

General notes

  • Other beamlines and the NIH are interested in tracking where BioCAT users go for beamtime during the APS-U dark period. In order to facilitate this, if you are a BioCAT user who is submitting a proposal at a beamline you haven’t used before we ask that you put “BioCAT” in the proposal title when submitting proposals to another facility (e.g. “Fiber diffraction experiments on XXX - BioCAT”). This will also help us provide more support for these experiments at these other facilities.
  • BioCAT currently does not plan to do time resolved experiments using our setup at any other beamline during the dark period, due to limitations of experimental capabilities at other beamlines and/or available beamtime.

Other beamlines

BL4-2, Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Light Source (SSRL), SLAC National Accelerator Lab (Menlo Park, CA)

Webpage: https://www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/smb-saxs/content/bl4-2

Contacts:

It is possible to do both small angle and wide- angle fiber diffraction experiments on BL4-2. The beamline is equipped with both a CCD based Rayonix detector and a Pilatus 3 1M pixel array detector. Muscle diffraction experiments will be done in collaboration with BioCAT staff in dedicated runs scheduled well in advance. Individuals wishing to be considered for these runs should contact Dr. Weikang Ma as early as possible. Individuals wishing to do fiber crystallography experiments are encouraged to submit proposals through the regular SSRL beamtime proposal system. These experiments will not be directly supported by BioCAT staff but we are always happy to provide advice in planning experiments.

It will not be feasible to perform experiments requiring live animals. Experiments can be done using skinned muscle shipped on wet ice or frozen tissue shipped on dry ice only.

ID7A, Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source (CHESS), Cornell University (Ithaca, NY)

Website: https://www.chess.cornell.edu/index.php/macchess/biosaxs

Contacts:

BioCAT staff has performed experiments confirming feasibility of muscle diffraction experiments on ID7A using their EIGER 4M pixel array detector. Muscle diffraction experiments will be done in collaboration with BioCAT and MacCHESS staff in dedicated runs scheduled well in advance. Individuals wishing to be considered for these runs should contact Dr. Weikang Ma as early as possible.

It will not be feasible to perform experiments requiring live animals. Experiments can be done using skinned muscle shipped on wet ice or frozen tissue shipped on dry ice only.

LiX (16ID), National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), Brookhaven National Lab (Brookhaven, NY)

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/lixbeamline/

Contacts:

LiX supports general fiber diffraction applications systems including scanning diffraction imaging, on partially ordered. People interested in doing such experiments are encouraged to contact beamline staff directly to make arrangements. Such experiments will not be directly supported by BioCAT personnel but we are always happy to provide advice in planning experiments.