ALSNews Vol. 235, November 26, 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
- Glycoprotein Receptor Yields Clues to Platelet "Stickiness"
- UEC Corner: Notes from the Users' Executive Committee
- Last Call: General Sciences Proposals Due December 1
- SRI 2003 Presentations, Users' Meeting Photos Posted Online
- Who's in Town: A Sampling of ALS Users
- Operations Update
1. GLYCOPROTEIN RECEPTOR YIELDS CLUES TO PLATELET
"STICKINESS"
by Art Robinson
(Contact: jdumas@wyeth.com)
Glycoprotein Ibα (GpIbα), a receptor on the surface of platelets in the blood, binds to several signaling molecules including thrombin, an enzyme released from damaged tissue that is required for blood clotting. Abnormal (both too much and too little) GpIbα–thrombin binding is associated with many pathological conditions, including the formation of blood clots that can cause heart attacks and strokes by blocking arteries (thrombosis) and bleeding disorders such as hemophilia. To gain insight into the adhesive mechanism by which platelet receptors regulate formation of a blood clot, a group from Wyeth Research working at the ALS has determined the crystal structure of a key portion of the GpIbα receptor in complex with thrombin.
Read the full story at
http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/69platelet.html.
Publication about this research: J.J. Dumas, R. Kumar, J. Seehra, W.S. Somers, and L. Mosyak, "Crystal structure of the GpIbα-thrombin complex essential for platelet aggregation," Science 301, 222 (2003).
2. UEC CORNER: NOTES FROM THE USERS' EXECUTIVE
COMMITTEE
by Jennifer Doudna
(Contact: doudna@uclink.berkeley.edu)
Greetings from the UEC, and thanks to all of you who voted for new UEC representatives in our recent election. Congratulations to our new members, Clemens Heske (University of Wurzburg, Germany), Corie Ralston (Berkeley Center for Structural Biology, Berkeley Lab) and Ed Westbrook (Molecular Biology Consortium), who will begin service on the UEC in January 2004. Many exciting changes are ahead, with the planned ALS upgrades beginning soon and the new user housing and research facilities on the horizon. The UEC continues to work with user organizations at other synchrotrons to encourage federal funding for national laboratories and to raise public awareness of synchrotron research. As always, we welcome user input and feedback. Happy Thanksgiving!
3. LAST CALL: GENERAL SCIENCES PROPOSALS DUE DECEMBER
1
(Contact: alsproposals@lbl.gov)
December 1, 2003, is the deadline for general user proposals in the general sciences for the running period from June to November 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 December 1 deadline. 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
4. SRI 2003 PRESENTATIONS, USERS' MEETING PHOTOS POSTED ONLINE
Presentations from the Eighth International Conference on Synchrotron Radiation Instrumentation (SRI 2003) have been posted online as PDF files (go to http://www.sri2003.lbl.gov/html/presentations.html). SRI 2003 was jointly hosted this year by the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory and the ALS and was held August 25 - 29, 2003, at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in downtown San Francisco. Also, photos and a brief report on the 2003 ALS Users' Meeting, held October 6 - 8 in Berkeley, have been posted (go to http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg/).
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 4.0.2
Stephen Cramer (Univ. of California, Davis, and Berkeley Lab)
Beamline 5.3.2
Gary Mitchell (The Dow Chemical Company)
Harald Ade (North Carolina State Univ.)
Adam Hitchcock (McMaster Univ., Canada)
Arthur Kilcoyne (Berkeley Lab)
Beamline 7.0.1
Steve Kevan (Univ. of Oregon)
Beamline 8.0.1
Oliver Hemmers (Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas)
Wayne Stolte (Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas)
Beamline 10.0.1
Dan Dessau (Univ. of Colorado at Boulder)
Z.X. Shen (Stanford Univ.)
Beamline 10.3.2
Vittal Yachandra (Berkeley Lab)
Beamline 11.0.1
Miquel Salmeron (Berkeley Lab)
David Shuh (Berkeley Lab)
6. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: Lampo@lbl.gov)
For the user runs of November 11 - 17 and 19 - 25, the beam reliability (time delivered/time scheduled) was 99%. Of the scheduled beam, 93% 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 Jan Pusina (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.