Synchrotron Radiation and Structural Proteomics

Eugenia Pechkova is assistant professor of biochemistry at the medical faculty of University of Genoa, Italy. After acquiring her doctoral degree in chemistry at Moscow State Lomonosov University, Russia, in 1998 and PhD in biophysics at University of Genoa in 2003, she became scientific secretary of Fondazione EL.B.A. (Electronic Biotechnology Advanced) and then scientific director and principal investigator of a big FIRB research grant on organic nanotechnology. Following a postdoctoral position, she has acquired the scientific responsibility of the laboratory of Nanobiocrystallography at the Nanoworld Institute, University of Genoa. In 2007, she worked as a visiting scientist at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), Grenoble, France, in both the Macromolecular Crystallography group and the Soft Condensed Matter group. She is one of the principal investigators of Radiation Damage BAG. She has authored 36 international scientific publications, two patents, the textbook Proteomics and Nanocrystallography, and chapters to several books. Her main interests are structural proteomics and protein nanocrystallography as well as X-ray radiation damage. Christian Riekel is member of the Soft Condensed Matter Group at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Grenoble, France. He received his PhD in structural silicate chemistry from the University of Munich in 1973. He has been working as a scientist at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, and the Polymer Department of the University of Hamburg, Germany. During his stay in Hamburg, he installed the worldwide first synchrotron SAXS/WAXS beamline for polymer research at HASYLAB/DESY. He moved to Grenoble in 1986 to become part of the ESRF founding team. He was the force behind the construction of the microfocus beamline (ID13). Riekel and his team have developed X-ray micro- and nano-beam techniques for applications ranging from soft matter to biopolymers, including protein crystals. Until 2008, he was head of the ESRF Soft Condensed Matter Group. Riekel has been working on soft matter and biopolymer topics as an emeritus scientist since September 2008. His current principal interests are the development of tools for manipulating small samples in an X-ray beam and the study of the assembly of biopolymers by X-ray scattering techniques.

Protein Micro- and Nanocrystallography Using Synchrotron Radiation. Single-Bounce Monocapillary X-Ray Optics: Design and Biological Applications. Thermophilic Enzymes of Potential Industrial Use: Structure and Function. Model Lysozyme Crystal Versus Aggregate, Un Confined Formation as Viewed by Recent Theory Aided by Computer Experiment. Molecular Modeling to Facilitate Protein Crystallization. Structural Analysis of the β-Subunit of the Translation Initiation Factor Aif2 from Different Species: Role of Zn Ions. Towards the Understanding of Molecular Aspects of Helicobacter pylori cag-PAI. Using X-Ray Scattering to Study the Structures of Membrane-Associated Proteins. An Overview of Langmuir Blodgett Protein Crystals via GISAXS, LASER , Raman and AFM. Radiation Damage in Protein Structural Characterization by Synchrotron Radiation: State of the Art and Nanotechnology-Based Perspective. Contactless Sample Manipulation for Synchrotron Radiation Experiments. Gold on Glass—The Annealing Process Investigated with GISAXS and Ellipsometry. Three-Dimensional Visualization of a Human Chromosome Using Coherent X-Ray Diffraction.