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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
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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
Scaling and merging time-resolved pink-beam diffraction with variational inference
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. (2024) Structural Dynamics 11, 064301
Laue-DIALS: Open-source software for polychromatic x-ray diffraction data
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. (2024) Structural Dynamics 11, 054701.
Structural dynamics of protein-protein association involved in the light-induced transition of Avena sativa LOV2 protein
Kim, C., Yun, S. R., Lee, S. J., Kim, S. O., Lee, H., Choi, J., Kim, J. G., Kim, T. W., You, S., Kosheleva, I., Noh, T., Baek, J., and Ihee, H. (2024) Nat Commun 15, 6991
New BioCARS Zoom Seminar video is available!
From Early Events to Physiological Response: Red/Far-Red Light Signaling by Myxobacterial Phytochrome. Marius Schmidt, University of...
DOIs at APS
APS now assigns a unique DOI to each experiment. This DOI needs to be referenced in any publication resulting from the experiment.
New BioCARS Zoom Seminar video is available
Analyzing TR-WAXS Data and Modeling Jα Helix Unfolding Using AlphaFold Leonardo Monrroy, Uppsala University, Sweden