Small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) serves as one of the complementary methods of structural biology. SAXS allows both characterization and low resolution structural studies of macromolecules, with advantage of liquid samples. Low scattering power of the biological molecules makes experiments using laboratory equipment very time consuming, therefore, many users opt for using dedicated SAXS beamlines at synchrotrons. However, advent of high flux X-ray sources as MetalJet (Excillum) and hybrid photon counting detectors as Eiger (Dectris) made rapid analysis more accessible in laboratory.
Centre of Molecular Structure is equipped with SAXSPoint 2.0 (Anton Paar) instrument with MetalJet C2+ X-ray source and Eiger 2M detector. Samples can be loaded to variety of the capillaries using an autosampler. The set of temperature controlled sample stages include low noise cell and capillary capable of on-line UV/Vis absorption spectrometry. The instrument can be routinely used for sample characterization, measurement of particle shape, oligomerization state, crystal structure validation and more.
The Centre of Molecular Structure is supported by: MEYS CR (LM2015043 CIISB); project Czech Infrastructure for Integrative Structural Biology for Human Health (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_013/0001776) from the ERDF; project Structural dynamics of biomolecular systems (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000447) from the ERDF.