Program areas at NYSBC
Research conducted at the simons electron microscopy Center (semc) is aimed at determining the structure of macromolecules to help understand their function. The facility has 12 transmission electron microscopes, 2 dual-beam focused ion beam scanning electron microscopes, as well as ancillary equipment for cryoem sample preparation. Semc is actively serving over 250 users from nysbc's nine member institutions as well as users from the national community through nysbc and nih-funded centers (national Center for cryoem access and training and national Center for in-situ tomographic ultramicroscopy). Semc develops open-source technologies to accelerate cryoem workflows from sample preparation to structure determination through its simons foundation initiatives (simons resource for automated molecular microscopy and simons machine learning Center). Semc also provides extensive training to members of the community through workshops, courses, and other training sessions. In several projects, semc staff has been involved extensively as collaborators developing New machine learning algorithms and software for automating cryoem, and contributing to solving the structures of: crispr-cas complexes, ion channels, gpcrs, and many drug targets, e.g., against diseases like covid-19. A total of 78 peer-reviewed scientific publications acknowledged semc support in 2022.
Nysbc has maintained x-ray crystallography resources at brookhaven national laboratory (bnl) since 2003. Nysbc has developed and operates beamline 19id-nyx at the national synchrotron light source ii (nsls-ii). Nyx provides the nysbc member institutions and associated investigators with access to synchrotron radiation and instrumentation necessary for collecting crystallographic data on biological macromolecules. Nyx has performed technical and scientific commissioning and started user operations in the spring of 2019. The primary accomplishments of the beamline program for 2022 were upgrades to automation and software and supporting user experiments.
Nysbc provides access to high-field nuclear magnetic resonance (nmr) spectroscopy to faculty from its nine member institutions. The nmr facility instrumentation includes nine nmr spectrometers that generally operate 24 hrs/day, 7 days/week. In 2022, each spectrometer was available, on average, 328 days. These resources allow researchers to determine the structure of proteins in solution and in solid state to atomic resolution, data that provides insight into the functional properties of the proteins. In 2022, group members from the laboratories of 19 affiliated principal investigators made use of these instruments. Data collected with these instruments produced 22 publications in peer-reviewed scientific publications. The Center operates the Center on molecular dynamics by nmr (comd/nmr), a biomedical technology research resource supported by u.s. national institutes of health grants p41 gm118302 / rm1 gm145397 and located at nysbc. The mission of comd-nmr is to make available to the biological research community advanced nmr spectroscopic and computational methods for characterizing protein and nucleic acid conformational dynamics in biological processes.
The research services laboratory at nysbc is a team of expert scientists that performs fee-for-service protein structure determination and protein production services for external clients. In addition, they also receive funding through collaborative research projects with academic and government laboratories. They completed the third year of a five year niaid contract using Structural Biology to investigate the etiologic agent for lyme disease, borrelia burgdorferi, to design a vaccine or discover antibody therapeutics against lyme disease. In addition, they participated in Structural Biology research projects with collaborators at rutgers university investigating ricin and shiga toxins to rationally design better inhibitors against these two toxins.