ALSNews Vol. 223, May 28, 2003
ALSNews is a biweekly electronic newsletter to keep users and other interested parties informed about developments at the Advanced Light Source, a national user facility located at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California. To be placed on the mailing list, send your name and complete internet address to ALSNews@lbl.gov. We welcome suggestions for topics and content.
Previous Issues are available.
Table of Contents
- Clues to Cholesterol Regulation Found in LDLR Structure
- SRI 2003 Early Registration Deadline June 3
- Art Show Draws a Crowd
- Last Call: General Sciences Proposals Due June 1
- Who's in Town: A Sampling of ALS Users
- Operations Update
1. CLUES TO CHOLESTEROL REGULATION FOUND IN LDLR
STRUCTURE
by Lori Tamura
(Contact: rudenko@chop.swmed.edu)
Cholesterol, especially in the "bad" form attached to low-density lipoprotein (LDL) particles, has been maligned as the culprit behind increased risk of atherosclerosis and heart disease. The truth, however, is that cholesterol is an essential component of cell membranes and provides the raw material for the synthesis of hormones, including estrogen and testosterone. A healthy level of cholesterol is regulated in part by a protein called the LDL receptor (LDLR). Anchored to the cell surface, LDLR captures LDL particles from the bloodstream and draws them inside the cell, where a shift to more acidic pH triggers LDL release. A highly decorated team of researchers, including three Nobel laureates, examined the structure of LDLR at protein crystallography beamlines at the ALS and the Advanced Photon Source (APS). The LDLR crystals, painstakingly prepared to reflect the conditions for LDL release within the cell (pH less than 6), yielded the structure of a key portion of LDLR, providing clues as to how the LDL release mechanism works. Such "working" knowledge is essential to understanding how breakdowns in the system lead to cholesterol-related disease.
Read the full story at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/56ldlr_structure.html.
Publication about this research: G. Rudenko, L. Henry, K. Henderson, K. Ichtchenko, M.S. Brown, J.L. Goldstein, and J. Deisenhofer, "Structure of the LDL Receptor Extracellular Domain at Endosomal pH," Science 298, 2353 (2002).
2. SRI 2003 EARLY REGISTRATION DEADLINE JUNE 3
(Contact: sri03@lbl.gov)
The early registration deadline for the Eighth International Conference on Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation (SRI 2003) is fast approaching! The conference, to be held August 25-29 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in downtown San Francisco, will cover a wide range of topics, including new developments in synchrotron radiation sources, free electron lasers, beamline instrumentation, and experimental techniques. Anyone planning to attend the conference should register online at http://www.sri2003.lbl.gov/html/registration.html by June 3 to receive the early registration rate of $450.00 (regular). After that date, the registration fee rises to $525.00. The student fee is $300.00.
It is also a good time to think about making reservations at conference hotels. Accommodations have been reserved at nearby hotels at reduced conference rates, and meeting attendees are urged to reserve as soon as their travel plans are complete to ensure the discounted rate.
The main SRI 2003 Web page at http://www.sri2003.lbl.gov/ has additional information, including a description of the meeting site; a preliminary program; online registration; accommodation, travel, and visa tips; tourist links; and a companion sightseeing program.
3. ART SHOW DRAWS A CROWD
(Contact: EJMoxon@lbl.gov)
ALS staff and users were treated to a unique event on May 15 when students from the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), displayed their artistic impressions of the ALS on the outdoor patio. The students, from the art, architecture, and engineering departments on campus, had recently spent two evenings at the ALS painting and drawing at various locations around the experiment floor. The result of their efforts was a colorful array of images of everything from wiring and monochromators to the historic ALS dome. For ALS staff it was a rare opportunity to see their environment through the fresh eyes of artists, and for the students it was an intriguing glimpse into the big research facility up on the hill. Liz Moxon (ALS) and David Attwood (Applied Science and Technology Program, UCB) organized the event with Professor Joe Slusky of UCB's Department of Architecture.
The images will also be exhibited during the SRI 2003 conference at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.
4. REMINDER: GENERAL SCIENCES PROPOSALS DUE JUNE
1
(Contact:alsproposals@lbl.gov)
June 1, 2003, is the deadline for general user proposals in the general sciences for the running period from December 2003 to May 2004. (This deadline does not apply to protein crystallography proposals, which have a separate process and schedule.)
Scientists wishing to renew a previous proposal must download the one-page "ALS Experiment Report and Request for Beamtime" form (see links below) and submit it to the User Services Office by the June 1 deadline. The numeric rating for each proposal will be communicated to the user along with comments from the Proposal Study Panel, where appropriate. The cutoff rating for each beamline in the previous proposal cycle is published on the Web (see below). The following resources are available for further information:
ALS User Services Administrator
alsuser@lbl.gov
General user proposal process
http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/independinvest.html
ALS General Sciences Proposal and Request for Beamtime
http://alsusweb.lbl.gov/4DCGI/WEB_GetForm/Page1P.shtml/Initialize
ALS Experiment Report and Request for Beamtime (renewal form)
http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/expt_report.rtf
Beamline information
http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/datasheets.html
http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/bl_table.html
Proposal Study Panel (PSP) scores
http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/pspscores.html
5. WHO'S IN TOWN: A SAMPLING OF ALS USERS
Following are some of the experimenters who will be collecting data during the next two weeks at the ALS.
Beamline 1.4.3
Gordon Brown (Stanford Univ.)
Raymond Jeanloz (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Hoi-Ying Holman (Berkeley Lab)
John Bradley (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
Beamlines 5.0.1, 5.0.2, 5.0.3
Ed Berry (Berkeley Lab)
Peter Hwang (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Sung-Hou Kim (Berkeley Lab)
Nigel Walker (Tularik, Inc.)
William Somers (Wyeth-Ayerst Research)
Marc Jacobs (Vertex Pharmaceuticals)
Ian Wilson (The Scripps Research Institute)
P. Andrew Karplus (Oregon State Univ.)
Mark Knapp (Roche Bioscience)
Duncan McRee (Syrrx, Inc.)
Glen Spraggon (Novartis Institute for Functional Genomics)
Beamline 5.3.2
Stephen Urquhart (Univ. of Saskatchewan, Canada)
Gary Mitchell (The Dow Chemical Company)
Adam Hitchcock (McMaster Univ., Canada)
Harald Ade (North Carolina State Univ.)
Beamline 6.3.1
Steve Kevan (Univ. of Oregon)
Beamline 7.3.1.1
Sergiy Minko, Denys Usov (Institut fur Polymerforschung Dresden, Germany)
Beamline 7.3.3
Ersan Ustundag (California Institute of Technology)
Beamlines 8.2.1, 8.2.2
Ursula Schulze-Gahmen (Berkeley Lab)
Ashley Deacon (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory)
Clare Peters-Libeu (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Roger Kornberg (Stanford Univ.)
Joseph Mougous (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Beamline 8.3.1
Sabine Borngraeber, Maia Vinogradova, Julian Chen, Joel Credle, Eugene
Hur, Dennis Wang, Hu Pan (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Al Stewart (SUGEN, Inc.)
Beamline 10.0.1
Ron Phaneuf (Univ. of Nevada, Reno)
Beamline 10.3.1
Eleanor Blakeley (Berkeley Lab)
6. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: Lampo@lbl.gov)
For the user runs of May 14 - 19 and May 20 - 24, the beam reliability (time delivered/time scheduled) was 95%. Of the scheduled beam, 91% was delivered to completion without interruption. There were no significant outages.
Long-term and weekly operations schedules are available on the Web (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/schedules/index.html). Requests for special operations use of the "scrubbing" shift should be sent to Bruce Samuelson (ALS-CR@lbl.gov, x4738) by 1:00 p.m. Friday. The Accelerator Status Hotline at (510) 486-6766 (ext. 6766 from Lab phones) features a recorded message giving up-to-date information on the operational status of the accelerator. A Web page showing the ring status in real time can be found at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/status/.
ALSNews is a biweekly electronic newsletter to keep users informed about developments at the Advanced Light Source, a national user facility located at Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California. To be placed on the mailing list, send your email address to ALSNews@lbl.gov. We welcome suggestions for topics and content. Submissions are due the Friday before the issue date.
LBNL/PUB-875
Editors: lstamura@lbl.gov, alrobinson@lbl.gov, amgreiner@lbl.gov,
ejmoxon@lbl.gov
This work was supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098.