BioCARS

Dedicated to state-of-the-art time-resolved research in biological and physical sciences.

Learn more about BioCARS

Micro-spectrophotometer

BioCARS micro-spectrophotometer for on-line and off-line recording of optical absorption spectra of crystals, to aid X-ray diffraction studies.

Laser Lab

BioCARS ps laser system: Spectra Physics, Ti:Sapphire Spitfire Pro 5 (780nm, 2ps, 1kHz, 5mJ/pulse) and TOPAS OP

Learn More About BioCARS Laser Lab

14-ID Beamline

BioCARS 14 ID beamline provides necessary infrastructure for conducting state-of-the-art time-resolved X-ray scattering studies with 100ps time resolution, both in biology and in physical sciences.

Learn More About 14-ID Beamline

Laue X-ray Diffraction Pattern

Laue diffraction pattern collected at 14 ID from a Scapharca Inequivalvis tetrameric hemoglobin crystal, as part of 100ps time-resolved studies.

Learn More About Time Resolved Crystallography

Important Information

APS has NEW Procedures for Users:
Returning to APS!

Instructions for using the Universal Proposal System (UPS)

Dosimeters are Required in the APS Experiment Hall

Our Mission

BioCARS is a national user facility for frontier synchrotron-based dynamics studies in structural biology at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), Argonne National Lab. The mission of BioCARS is to provide state-of-the-art X-ray facility, scientific and technical expertise, and support to enable users to study the dynamic properties of biological macromolecules by X-ray scattering techniques: time-resolved diffraction and solution scattering (SAXS/WAXS). In the 48-bunch mode of the APS storage ring, BioCARS 14-ID beamline provides high polychromatic flux, with ~5.8 × 109 photons per 250ps pulse delivered to the sample. Short X-ray pulses are synchronized with ps or ns laser pulses for conducting pump-probe time-resolved experiments. The overall goal of time-resolved experiments at BioCARS is to understand basic biological processes in structural and dynamics terms, on time scales from 250 picoseconds to seconds.

Use of BioCARS is supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under grant number P41 GM118217. Funding acknowledgment for publications resulting from use of BioCARS facility can be found here.

APS-U and BioCARS

Click here to learn more about APS-U and how it will benefit BioCARS

Quick Links

Recent Publications

Lee, C., Chan, A. M., Nijhawan, A. K., Ho, M. B., Kosheleva, I., and Chen, L. X.
(2025) Millisecond phase transition kinetics of lyotropic liquid crystalline nanoparticles observed by time-resolved small angle x-ray solution scattering.
Chemphyschem e202401072.
https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cphc.202401072

Lee, B., White, K. I., Socolich, M., Klureza, M. A., Henning, R., Srajer, V., Ranganathan, R., and Hekstra, D. R.
(2025) Direct visualization of electric-field-stimulated ion conduction in a potassium channel.
Cell 188, 77-88.e15.
https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)01419-3

Chan, A. M., Ebrahimi, S. B., Samanta, D., Leshchev, D., Nijhawan, A. K., Hsu, D. J., Ho, M. B., Ramani, N., Kosheleva, I., Henning, R., Mirkin, C. A., Kohlstedt, K. L., and Chen, L. X.
(2024) Early Folding Dynamics of i-Motif DNA Revealed by pH-Jump Time-Resolved X-ray Solution Scattering.
 J. Am. Chem. Soc. 146, 33743–33752.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.4c11768

Zielinski, K. A., Dolamore, C., Wang, H. K., Henning, R. W., Wilson, M. A., Pollack, L., Srajer, V., Hekstra, D. R., and Dalton, K. M.
Scaling and merging time-resolved pink-beam diffraction with variational inference.
Structural Dynamics 11, 064301 (2024)
https://pubs.aip.org/aca/sdy/article/11/6/064301/3319201/Scaling-and-merging-time-resolved-pink-bea

Hewitt, R. A., Dalton, K. M., Mendez, D. A., Wang, H. K., Klureza, M. A., Brookner, D. E., Greisman, J. B., McDonagh, D., Šrajer, V., Sauter, N. K., Brewster, A. S., and Hekstra, D. R.
Laue-DIALS: Open-source software for polychromatic x-ray diffraction data.
Structural Dynamics 11, 054701 (2024).
https://pubs.aip.org/aca/sdy/article/11/5/054701/3315187/Laue-DIALS-Open-source-software-for-polychromatic

Science Highlights

See also: APS Science Highlights

News and Announcements