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MX beamline

Macromolecular and Microfocus Crystallography

Introduction

The Macromolecular Crystallography (MX) beamlines are general purpose crystallography instruments for determining chemical and biological structures. The MX1 beamline is a bending-magnet beamline with stability and ease of use for high-throughput crystallography projects. The MX2 beamline is a finely-focused in-vacuum undulator equipped with a microcollimator. It is ideal for weakly-diffracting, hard-to-crystallise proteins, viruses, protein assemblies and nucleic acids as well as smaller molecules such as inorganic catalysts and organic drug molecules.

X-ray crystallography can be used to determine three-dimensional structure of macromolecules proteins, DNA, RNA viruses and cell structures.  MX1 and MX2 have complementary capabilities. MX1 facilitates high density throughput screening. MX2, with its upgraded ACRF detector, is ideal for weakly-diffracting, hard-to-crystallise proteins, viruses, protein assemblies and nucleic acids— as well as smaller molecules such as inorganic catalysts and organic drug molecules.

ANSTO would like to offer special rapid access to the MX2 Macromolecular Crystallography Beamline for users currently involved in COVID-19 research.

Access would consist of short mini-shifts of MX2 beamtime (minimum of 2 hours), available as-needed.

Step 1. Login to the user portal (or create a user portal account) if you don't have one

Step 2. Select the proposal round "Special Rapid Access COVID-19" and submit your proposal