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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
Worth, E., Stadnytskyi, V., Cho, H. S., Schotte, F., and Anfinrud, P.
Rapid and precise temperature control of samples flowing through a capillary from −20 to 130 °C.
Rev. Sci. Instrum. 97, 025205 (2026)
https://pubs.aip.org/aip/rsi/article/97/2/025205/3378575/Rapid-and-precise-temperature-control-of-samples
Time-Resolved Mn Kα Emission Reveals Early Redox Dynamics in the S3 to S0 transition of the Photosystem II Kok Cycle.
Journal of Biological Chemistry 111215 (2026).
Linse, J.-B., Cho, H. S., Schotte, F., Anfinrud, P. A., and Hub, J. S.
Depletion of the Protein Hydration Shell with Increasing Temperature Observed by Small-Angle X-ray Scattering and Molecular Simulations.
J. Am. Chem. Soc. 147, 47117–47125 (2025)
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.5c13497
Hekstra, D. R., Wang, H. K., Klureza, M. A., Greisman, J. B., and Dalton, K. M.
Sensitive detection of structural dynamics using a statistical framework for comparative crystallography.
Science Advances 11, eadj2921 (2025)
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adj2921
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
Science Highlights
See also: APS Science Highlights
Pink-beam serial crystallography
Meents, A., Wiedorn, M. O., Srajer, V., Henning, R., Sarrou, I., Bergtholdt, J., Barthelmess, M., Reinke, P. Y. A., Dierksmeyer, D., Tolstikova, A., Schaible, S., Messerschmidt, M., Ogata, C. M., Kissick, D. J., Taft, M. H., Manstein, D. J., Lieske, J., Oberthuer, D., Fischetti, R. F., and Chapman, H. N. Pink-beam serial crystallography. Nature Communications 8, 1281 (2017)
Combining ns temperature-jump pump with X-ray pulse probe: study of structural dynamics in insulin
Rimmerman, D., Leshchev, D., Hsu, D. J., Hong, J., Kosheleva, I., and Chen, L. X. Direct Observation of Insulin Association Dynamics with Time-Resolved X-ray Scattering. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 4413–4418 (2017)
New Technique Shocks Proteins Into Action
Hekstra, D. R., White, K. I., Socolich, M. A., Henning, R. W., Šrajer, V., and Ranganathan, R. (2016) Electric-field-stimulated protein mechanics. Nature 540, 400–405
Moffat Appointed Senior Advisor For Life Sciences At The APS
The Advanced Photon Source (APS) is the Western Hemisphere’s most powerful source of x-rays for research. It attracts more than 4,000 users from...
Moffat To Receive ACA Patterson Award
BioCARS Principal Investigator Keith Moffat has been selected as the recipient of the 2011 Patterson Award, given by the American Crystallographic...
BioCARS Participates In Annual X-Ray School
On June 16 and 17, 2010, BioCARS conducted two half-day experiments with total of 13 students from the National School on Neutron and X-ray...