Three Biomedical Beamlines at NSLS-II for Macromolecular Crystallography and Small-Angle Scattering

We report on the status of the development of three beamlines for the National Synchrotron Light Source-II (NSLS-II), two for macromolecular crystallography (MX), and one for wide- and small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS). Funded by the National Institutes of Health, this suite of Advanced Beamlines for Biological Investigations with X-rays (ABBIX) is scheduled to begin operation by 2015. The two MX beamlines share a sector with identical canted in-vacuum undulators (IVU21). The microfocusing FMX beamline on the inboard branch employs a two-stage horizontal source demagnification scheme, will cover an energy range of 5 – 23 keV, and at 12.7 keV will focus a flux of up to 1013 ph/s into a spot of 1 μm width. The companion AMX beamline on the short outboard branch of the sector is tunable in the range of 5 – 18 keV and has a native focus of 4 μm (h) × 2 μm (v). This robust beamline will be highly automated, have high throughput capabilities, and with larger beams and low divergence will be well suited for structure determinations on large complexes. The high brightness SAXS beamline, LIX, will provide multiple dynamic and static experimental systems to support scientific programs in solution scattering, membrane structure determination, and tissue imaging. It will occupy a different sector, equipped with a single in-vacuum undulator (IVU23). It can produce beams as small as 1 μm across, and with a broad energy range of 2.1 – 18 keV it will support anomalous SAXS.