ALSNews Vol. 233, October 29, 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
- Antibiotic-Resistant Ribosome Sheds Light on Protein Synthesis
- Congresswoman Honors ALS on 10th Anniversary
- Vote Now for Three New UEC Members
- Reminder to International Users: Required Documentation
- Proposal Scores and Running Schedule Available Online
- First Call: General Sciences Proposals Due December 1
- Who's in Town: A Sampling of ALS Users
- Operations Update
1. ANTIBIOTIC-RESISTANT RIBOSOME SHEDS LIGHT ON
PROTEIN SYNTHESIS
by Lynn Yarris
(Contact: JCate@lbl.gov)
Protein crystallography images from the ALS have helped researchers make new determinations about the process by which proteins get synthesized from the genetic code. The researchers made their determinations by comparing images of ribosomes taken from normal strains of the bacterium Escherichia coli to those of a mutant antibiotic-resistant strain. Ribosomes are the organelles in living cells responsible for translating the genetic code into proteins. It is the first time that anyone has been able to compare the structural differences between the ribosomes of normal and antibiotic-resistant strains of E. coli. Such comparisons can help us learn more about the mechanisms behind protein synthesis.
Read the full story at
http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/68ecoli_ribosome.html.
Publication about this research: A. Vila-Sanjurjo, W.K. Ridgeway, V. Seymaner, W. Zhang, S. Santoso, K. Yu, and J.H. Doudna Cate, "X-ray crystal structures of the WT and a hyper-accurate ribosome from Escherichia coli," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 100, 8682 (2003).
2. CONGRESSWOMAN HONORS ALS ON 10TH ANNIVERSARY
In tribute to the 10th Anniversary of the ALS, U.S. Representative Barbara Lee of California's Ninth District (which includes Berkeley Lab) inserted comments into the October 20, 2003, edition of the U.S. Congressional Record. In her remarks, she described the ALS as "one of our Nation's premier scientific research centers," and an "extraordinary tool" offering unprecedented opportunities for state-of-the-art research in materials science, biology, chemistry, physics, and the environmental sciences. "Since its inception in 1993," she said, "the ALS has been at the forefront of science. Among its many accomplishments, it has helped reveal how bacteria resist antibiotics, how inexpensive and efficient solar cells can be fabricated, and how strange substances like quasicrystals possess properties never before seen." Congresswoman Lee's full statement appears in Vol. 149 of the Congressional Record and can be viewed online by searching for page "E2090" at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/crecord/retrieve.html.
3. VOTE NOW FOR THREE NEW UEC MEMBERS
(Contact: AMGreiner@lbl.gov)
The 2003 UEC election is now in progress. Submit your vote online by going to http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/uec/vote/ and clicking on "Vote." To view the final slate of candidates and their biographical information, go to the above site and click on "View Candidate Bios." All ALS users with current email addresses on file in our user database are eligible to vote. The deadline for casting your vote is November 21, and the results will be posted November 25. The newly elected members will take office for a three-year term beginning January 1, 2004. Rotating off the committee at the end of 2003 are Jennifer Doudna (Univ. of California, Berkeley) and Gerry McDermott (Berkeley Lab).
4. REMINDER TO INTERNATIONAL USERS: REQUIRED DOCUMENTATION
(Contact: alsuser@lbl.gov)
All ALS researchers who are not U.S. citizens and who were either born in, or are nationals of, a sensitive country* or a state-sponsored terrorist nation* must notify the ALS User Services Office of their travel plans at least 90 days before their intended arrival date in the U.S. This will allow the User Services Office to prepare the paperwork necessary to comply with new Department of Energy guidelines for international researchers.
Upon arrival in the U.S., visiting researchers should be prepared to show immigration officials both their Letter of Invitation and their Letter of Support, as well as all other immigration papers (visa stamp, passport, I-94 application, etc.). Users who obtained their visa with the assistance of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will have received both their invitation and support letters in advance.
*Countries falling into these categories are listed on the Web pages
below:
http://www.lbl.gov/ehs/security/02intl_emp/countries_sens.html
http://www.lbl.gov/ehs/security/02intl_emp/countries_terr.html
5. PROPOSAL SCORES AND RUNNING SCHEDULE AVAILABLE
ONLINE
(Contact: GFKrebs@lbl.gov)
The general sciences beamtime allocation process for the running period from December 2003 through May 2004 is complete. The number of proposals for the cycle was 213, up from 191 in the previous period. The number of eight-hour shift requests increased from 3932 to 4641, an increase of about 18%. A total of 1775 shifts, equal to about 38% of the total time requested in the proposals, were allocated. Competition for beamtime on insertion-device beamlines was especially keen—requests for the insertion device beamlines will continue to find the proposal process for general users extremely competitive. For more detailed results, including beamline score distributions and cutoff scores, go to http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/pspscores.html.
The schedule for the upcoming running period has also been posted on the web at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/schedules/next_ltsch.html. Two-bunch operation will occur March 17 - 28 and a shutdown is scheduled for April 26 - June 10. The shutdown this year was extended an extra week in an effort to safely meet a fairly demanding schedule driven by the tasks of surveying and aligning the storage ring.
6. FIRST CALL: GENERAL SCIENCES PROPOSALS DUE
DECEMBER 1
(Contact: alsproposals@lbl.gov)
The User Services Office is now accepting general user proposals from scientists who wish to conduct research in the general sciences at the ALS during the running period from June to November 2004. The deadline for submissions is December 1, 2003. (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 December 1 deadline. The form is in Rich Text Format (RTF) and can be saved to your hard disk, filled out, and attached in an email message to alsproposals@lbl.gov with the key words "Experiment Report" in the subject header. Proposals cannot be renewed for more than three cycles after they are first submitted. After three rollover cycles, a new proposal must be submitted. If your proposal is designated ALS-00893 or lower, then you must submit a new proposal to be eligible for beamtime.
The numeric rating for each proposal will be communicated to the user along with any comments that might have been added by the Proposal Study Panel. The cutoff rating for each beamline in the previous proposal cycle is published on the Web (see item 5 above). 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
7. WHO'S IN TOWN: A SAMPLING OF ALS USERS
The ALS will be operating at 1.5 GeV from October 28 through November 2. Following are some of the experimenters who will be collecting data during the next two weeks at the ALS.
Beamline 1.4.3
Jillian Banfield (Berkeley Lab)
John Bradley (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory)
Ted Raab (Carnegie Institution of Washington)
Beamline 4.0.2
Stephen Cramer (Univ. of California, Davis, and Berkeley Lab)
Chuck Fadley (Univ. of California, Davis, and Berkeley Lab)
Beamlines 5.0.1, 5.0.2, 5.0.3
Robert Schoenlein (Berkeley Lab)
Kam Zhang (Plexxicon, Inc.)
William Somers (Wyeth-Ayerst Research)
Li-Wei Hung (TB Structural Genomics Consortium)
Elizabeth Getzoff (The Scripps Research Institute)
John Hart (Univ. of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio)
Thomas Poulos (Univ. of California, Irvine)
Peter Hwang (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Duncan McRee (Syrrx, Inc.)
Beamline 5.3.2
Harald Ade (North Carolina State Univ.)
Archie Smith (Columbian Chemicals Company)
Gary Mitchell (The Dow Chemical Company)
Adam Hitchcock (McMaster Univ., Canada)
Beamline 7.0.1
Steve Kevan (Univ. of Oregon)
Miquel Salmeron (Berkeley Lab)
Beamline 7.3.1.1
Jo Stohr (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory)
Beamline 8.0.1
Alexander Moewes, Mikhail Iablonskikh (Univ. of Saskatchewan, Canada)
Dan Dessau (Univ. of Colorado at Boulder)
Jeffrey Kortright (Berkeley Lab)
Beamlines 8.2.1, 8.2.2
Richard Brennan (Oregon Health and Science Univ.)
Christopher Garcia (Stanford Univ.)
Ashley Deacon (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory)
Axel Brunger (Stanford Univ.)
Steven Sprang (Univ. of Texas Southwestern Medical Center)
Pamela Bjorkman (California Institute of Technology)
Beamline 8.3.1
Joy Huffman (The Scripps Research Institute)
Tom Alber, James Berger (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Shahram Khademi (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Adrian Keatinge-Clay (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Peter Hwang (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Brian Kelch (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Kevin Slep (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Joel Credle (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Stephanie Wang (Univ. of California, San Francisco)
Beamline 9.3.2
Suntharampillai Thevuthasan (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
Piero Pianetta (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory)
Beamline 10.3.2
Andrei Istratov (Berkeley Lab)
8. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: Lampo@lbl.gov)
For the user runs of October 14 - 19 and 21 - 27, the beam reliability (time delivered/time scheduled) was 98%. Of the scheduled beam, 90% 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
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.