Stefan Arold's group from KAUST in Saudi Arabia became the first group to solve the structure of an important protein using the new EIGER 9M detector at SOLEIL.
The EIGER 9M was developed by Dectris and installed at the PROXIMA2A beamline on the 18 November. This is one of the first commercial models of EIGER 9M and is currently the most advanced detector for X-ray diffraction experiments available at any facility world-wide.
The experiment centred on a small cubic crystal of an enzyme involved in activating the cellular response to environmental stress in plants.
Installation of the EIGER detector on PROXIMA2A - November 2015
1800 EIGER 9M images, collected in only 45 seconds, yielded an excellent 1.5 Angstroms data set. The 3D structure, which was solved directly at the beamline, gives an unprecedented vision into how this system functions at the atomic scale.
The figure below shows slices of the electron density map including parts of the enzymatic substrate captured in the active site.
This research is one of a range of studies conducted at SOLEIL relevant to the discussions taking place on climate science and global warming (see the poster online), as part of the Paris COP21 summit.
