Scientific News

Petra III inaugurated

January 2010 - On the 16th November, Professor Annette Schavan, Germany’s Federal Minister for Education and Research, helped to inaugurate the PETRA III synchrotron radiation source.

For the past two-and-a-half years, EMBL Hamburg’s campus partner, the German Synchrotron Research Centre (DESY) has been converting the PETRA storage ring into a dedicated low emittance synchrotron radiation facility with leading optical parameters, named PETRA III. Out of PETRA III’s 14 beamlines, three are being designed and built by EMBL. Now, the completion and launch of the PETRA III ring promises to make both DESY and EMBL global competitors in the field of structural biology.

Minister Schavan joined Jürgen Mlynek, President of the Helmholtz Association, Herlind Gundelach, Hamburg´s Science Senator and DESY Director Helmut Dosch to start the 1150 magnets running. “This facility offers unique perspectives,” she said. “The collaboration between physicists, biologists and infection researchers offers great opportunities for important medical applications.” The teams of Thomas Schneider and Stefan Fiedler at EMBL-Hamburg are constructing beamlines for small angle X-ray scattering on solutions and X-ray crystallography of biological macromolecules, which will be part of an integrated infrastructure for life science applications using synchrotron radiation. The facility will support non-specialists not only in performing the beamline experiments, but also in sample preparation and the processing and evaluation of the X-ray data. “After a period of internal testing we look forward to welcoming the first users in the second half of 2010,” says Thomas. “We are doing our best to be as fast as possible, while making sure that the instruments we build are solid and robust to provide the necessary precision to make the best of the precious beam from PETRA III. This will allow us to push macromolecular crystallography and small angle X-ray scattering beyond their current limits.”

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