ORNL hosts the participants of the 4th Neutrons in Structural Biology Workshop and the IMAGINE single crystal neutron diffractometer first external users

Volume 25 • Number 1 • 2014 Neutron News 12 O Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) hosted the fourth workshop on the applications of neutron scattering in structural biology during June 24–28, 2013. Since the inaugural event in 2010, the workshop has increased in popularity and broadened to include graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and university faculty with diverse backgrounds and interests in structural biology. The workshop is structured to introduce the participants to neutron scattering techniques, instrumentation and data collection, analysis and interpretation and to expose them to cuttingedge research in neutron structural biology. The 2013 workshop symposium opened with an introduction to neutrons in biology by Dean Myles (ORNL), and featured research presentations by Dennis Brown (North Carolina State University) on the solution structure of the prototype virus of genus alphavirus in the family Togaviridae Sindbis investigated by Small Angle Neutron Scattering (SANS), Zimei Bu (City College of New York) on the structure and dynamics of the interfacial adapter proteins NHERF1 and Ezrin upon heterodimer formation investigated by SANS and Neutron Spin Echo (NSE), Alice Vrielink (University of Western Australia) on cholesterol oxidase enzyme structure and function in fl avin mediated oxidative catalysis investigated by ultra-high resolution X-ray and neutron crystallography, Jan Kmetko (Kenyon College) on the interaction of an amyloid peptide with biomimetic membrane studied by neutron refl ectometry and Frederick Heberle (ORNL) on membrane raft mixtures investigated by SANS. The workshop program included lectures and tutorials on neutron scattering techniques and on practical applications of SANS, neutron crystallography, refl ectometry, spectroscopy and imaging. Particpants also toured ORNL’s fl agship neutron and computational facilities: the High Flux Isotope Reactor (HFIR), the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS), the historic Graphite Reactor and the Titan supercomputer. This year’s workshop had an additional special fl avor as the course also provided several participants with the opportunity to become the fi rst external users of the new single crystal diffractometer at the HFIR (Figures 1 and 2). The IMAGINE instrument is designed to provide neutron data at or near atomic resolutions (1.5 Å) from crystals with volume <1.0 mm3 and with unit cell edges <100 Å. Beam line features include novel elliptical focusing mirrors that deliver neutrons into a 2.0 × 3.2 mm2 focal spot at the sample position with full width vertical and horizontal divergence of 0.5° and 0.6°, respectively, and variable short and long wavelength cutoff optics that provide automated exchange between multiple wavelength confi gurations (λmin = 2.0 Å, 2.8 Å, 3.3 Å – λmax = 3.0 Å, 4.0 Å, 4.5 Å, ~20 Å) (Meilleur et al., 2013). The course sponsors included ORNL (Neutron Sciences Directorate), the Tennessee Department of Energy (DOE) Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) and the Joint Institute for Neutron Scattering (JINS).