Diamond has secured a strategic investment as part of the recently announced BBSRC ALERT programme funding for scientific instrumentation, which will enable improved access to world-leading equipment and research techniques to the UK’s bioscience community. The £1.3M award will secure a state-of-the-art JUNGFRAU 9M detector to support Diamond’s Microfocus Macromolecular Crystallography beamline I24. This new generation of detector represents a leap forward in time-resolved structural biology research for synchrotron users. They allow for faster timescales than what is possible with the existing detectors in use – as fast as microseconds – which is invaluable to structural biologists because these are the timescales at which many enzyme reactions and other functions of proteins take place.

Chris Schofield FRS, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and co-investigator on the project, explains why this equipment is so significant:
“Understanding how nature efficiently makes antibiotics and how antimicrobial resistance works benefits greatly from the ability to obtain time resolved structures of enzymes involved in these processes. In the UK, we are currently limited by much slower timescales than what is possible at X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs), where access is difficult and infrequent. The award of funding for a JUNGFRAU detector bridges this gap for British researchers and will enable us to obtain time resolved structures at Diamond on beamline I24 in the microsecond time regime. The results will help the design of new drugs to combat antimicrobial resistance.”

The new detector delivered by the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland will complement existing X-ray detectors at Diamond
Scientists at Diamond have been carrying out preliminary work with a smaller version of the detector, Jungfrau 1M, which has allowed them to begin the testing and calibration process to allow faster installation and onboarding when the new equipment is delivered. The project will also see significant development in the scientific computing and data infrastructure areas to allow the investment to provide the most value to the research community.

Mike Hough, Principal Beamline Scientist at Diamond’s VMXi beamline, and principal investigator of the funding application says:
“This will bring a unique new capability to Diamond and provide new opportunities for our users in the scientific community. We have a strong team helping to bring this work to fruition, both at Diamond (led by Robin Owen, Allen Orville and Graeme Winter) and in our co-investigator team of leading UK academic scientists. We greatly appreciate the support of BBSRC in helping us push back the boundaries of structural biology.”
To learn more about the ALERT programme, and the full £22.3M award allocation, visit the BBSRC website here.

In conclusion, co-investigator David Leys, Professor of Structural Biology at Manchester University notes:
“The installation of the JUNGFRAU detector will allow the structural biology community to study protein dynamic events, including enzyme catalysis, at much shorter timescales. This will provide fundamental insights that can guide protein/enzyme design and thus enable engineering biology.”
To learn more about this investment and other strategic upgrades to life science at Diamond, watch the Diamond-II Community Webinar, Life Sciences Parallel session here: https://www.diamond.ac.uk/Home/News/LatestNews/2024/Diamond-II-Community-Webinar.html

- ENDS -

Diamond Light Source provides industrial and academic user communities with access to state-of-the-art analytical tools to enable world-changing science. Shaped like a huge ring, it works like a giant microscope, accelerating electrons to near light speeds, to produce a light 10 billion times brighter than the Sun, which is then directed off into 33 laboratories known as ‘beamlines’. In addition to these, Diamond offers access to several integrated laboratories including the world-class Electron Bio-imaging Centre (eBIC) and the Electron Physical Science Imaging Centre (ePSIC).    

Diamond serves as an agent of change, addressing 21st century challenges such as disease, clean energy, food security and more. Since operations started, more than 16,000 researchers from both academia and industry have used Diamond to conduct experiments, with the support of approximately 760 world-class staff. Almost 12,000 scientific articles have been published by our users and scientists.    

Funded by the UK Government through the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), and by the Wellcome Trust, Diamond is one of the most advanced scientific facilities in the world, and its pioneering capabilities are helping to keep the UK at the forefront of scientific research.    
Diamond was set-up as an independent not for profit company through a joint venture, between the UKRI’s Science and Technology Facilities Council and one of the world’s largest biomedical charities, the Wellcome Trust - each respectively owning 86% and 14% of the shareholding.