Part of the UK community-led training program in cryo-EM funded by Wellcome and the MRC.
 

Hosted by University of Leeds ABSL, eBIC Diamond Light Source, and University of Leicester, this four day course is targeted at those with no or very little experience in cryo-electron tomography, and will introduce participants to sample preparation, tilt-series acquisition, and image analysis pipelines. Participants will work in small groups with instructors to gain hands-on TEM (Titan Krios) experience, and learn how to independently use software packages (IMOD, AreTomo, EMAN2 and RELION) for tomogram reconstruction, tomogram segmentation, particle picking, and sub-tomogram averaging.
 

• Protein expression and purification
• Biophysical characterisation of macromolecular complexes
• Introduction to electron microscopy
• X-ray crystallography, small angle X-ray scattering and serial crystallography using synchrotron radiation
• Application of nuclear magnetic resonance in structural biology
• Mass spectrometry in protein-protein interaction studies
• Single-molecule methods and super-resolution light microscopy
• AI-based structure prediction methods

The ORNL Neutron Sciences Directorate is organizing a workshop, Neutrons in Structural Biology â€" Challenges & Opportunities, to be held June 10-12, 2024 at the Sheraton Pentagon City Hotel, Arlington, VA. The goal of the workshop is to garner support for the construction of the macromolecular neutron diffraction beamline EWALD at ORNL’s Second Target Station. EWALD will be capable of performing biological neutron crystallography on radically smaller crystals to help meet neutron beamtime demand for challenging biological systems.

The workshop will highlight the biological scientific community’s need for access to a new generation of neutron scattering capabilities to address pressing challenges in biochemistry, structural biology, enzymology and drug design that cannot be solved with the current neutron scattering technology or other structural biology techniques such as X-ray crystallography, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, and cryo-EM.

The workshop will also introduce the Instrument Scientific Advisory Committee for the development of a macromolecular neutron diffractometer at ORNL’s Second Target Station. The beamline will deliver orders of magnitude gains in performance for biological research and expand accessibility to larger biological systems crucial for understanding biochemistry and advancing the design of future therapeutics.Â

In addition, the Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP)-enabled IMAGINE-X instrument, a capability recently funded by the Department of Energy’s Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment (BRaVE) Initiative, will be presented at the workshop. IMAGINE-X, under construction at the High Flux Isotope Reactor, will dramatically enhance signal from hydrogen atoms, obviating the need for deuteration, and decreasing the crystal volume required for a successful experiment by one-to-two orders of magnitude. The successful development of the DNP capability and its implementation at the STS beamline will create a "quantum leap" in biological macromolecular neutron crystallography.

The workshop will be a forum for structural biology and biochemistry experts, early career researchers, and students to discuss scientific advances and collaboration opportunities. The workshop will include a 1-day satellite training workshop (June 10, 2024) to educate graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in the application of neutron crystallography and small angle scattering in structural biology.

RapiData 2024 at SSRL is a practical course in macromolecular X-ray diffraction data collection, data processing and structure solution. The aim of the RapiData course is to educate and train young scientists in data collection and processing methods at synchrotron beamlines, using state-of-the-art software and instrumentation.

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Topics:

• Specimen preparation, tactics in data collection
• X-ray light sources
• X-ray detectors
• Data reduction
• Structure solving by MAD, SAD and Molecular replacement
• Complementary methods (spectroscopy and small angle scattering)

Hercules European School is a five week course coordinated by the Université Grenoble Alpes (UGA). The school provides training for students, postdoctoral and senior scientists from European and non-European universities and laboratories, in the field of Neutrons, X-ray Synchrotron Radiation, and Free Electron Laser for condensed matter studies (Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Materials Science, Geosciences, Industrial applications). Neutron and X-ray science is integrated with complementary techniques like (but not only) optical and electron microscopy, NMR, optical spectroscopy.Â

It includes lectures, practical work, tutorials, and visits of Large Facilities: ALBA in Barcelona, KIT in Karlsruhe, DESY and European XFEL in Hamburg, Elettra and FERMI in Trieste, ESRF and ILL in Grenoble, SOLEIL in Paris-Saclay, and PSI in Villigen.Â
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The language of the course is English.Â

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The ACA Summer Course in Chemical Crystallography is a program that is now into its third decade of instruction here in the United States. The current incarnation of the course is directed towards Single-Crystal Chemical Crystallography and Powder Diffraction techniques, as applicable to small molecule studies. The course is designed to instruct attendees in the theory and practice of these two aspects of crystallography.

The course is held every summer, in even years now at Purdue University, and in odd years at Northwestern University. For updates on the course, click here.

No prior knowledge of crystallography is expected from attendees. However, a good understanding of undergraduate level chemistry, physics and mathematics is desirable. While the course is geared towards graduate level attendees, applications from strong undergraduate students will be considered. Â Past course attendees have included faculty members and industrial researchers.

This 1-week in-person short course will be an immersive experience in the art and science of cryoEM held at the Simons Electron Microscopy Center housed at the New York Structural Biology Center in NYC, USA. The mornings offer lectures and stimulating round table discussions. The afternoons provide hands-on practicals to reinforce fundamental concepts and topics covered earlier in the day.
 

Lecturers include:
Joachim Frank (Columbia University)
Victor Chen & Wen Jian (Purdue University)
Fred Sigworth (Yale University)
Amedee des Georges & Reza Khayat (CUNY)
Rich Hite (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center)
Piliar Cossio (Flatiron Institute)
Jack Turner (EMBD/EMPIAR)
Oli Clarke (Columbia University)
Gira Bhabha & Damian Ekiert (New York University)

An Intensive Introductory Course in X-ray Crystallography

The X-TechLab training session aims to endow the local and regional scientific communities with technical skills that will allow them to use X-ray techniques as tools for solving various problems in their specific fields.

The training session will focus on two parallel interrelated axes: single-crystal X-ray diffraction and powder X-ray diffraction.

Depending on the training axis, you will acquire specific skills to be able to do the following:

• Describe the phenomenon of X-ray diffraction by crystals
• Recognize a good quality crystal
• Identify the suitable crystallization technique for a given study
• Describe the operation of a single-crystal diffractometer
• Implement a routine data collection using a single-crystal diffractometer
• Solve and refine a small-molecule single-crystal structure
• Perform sample preparation
• Describe the operation of a powder diffractometer
• Implement a routine data collection using a powder diffractometer
• Phase identification
• Quantitative analysis.

This course will introduce high-resolution Cryo-EM to the structural biology research community. Tt will include image formation and three-dimensional reconstruction theories and available software, tutorials, and demonstrations for data collection and analysis.
The course is free of charge, but you will need to register: here

Teaching crystallography and diffraction method for the crystal structure determination

Topics

• Crystal lattices and symmetry
• Crystallographic calculation
• International Tables for Crystallography
• X-ray scattering and diffraction
• Resolution of crystal structures on single crystals
• Powder diffraction and practical work on the diffractometer
• Crystal engineering
• Electron density modelling

RapiData 2023 at SSRL is a practical course in macromolecular X-ray diffraction data collection, data processing and structure solution. The aim of the RapiData course is to educate and train young scientists in data collection and processing methods at synchrotron beamlines, using state-of-the-art software and instrumentation.

The course will comprise hands-on experiments at the SSRL beamlines, software tutorials, and lectures on the following topics:

• Specimen preparation, tactics in data collection
• X-ray light sources
• X-ray detectors
• Data reduction
• Structure solving by MAD, SAD and Molecular replacement
• Complementary methods (spectroscopy and small angle scattering)

The main focus of the school is on chemical and materials science. Topics to be covered will include:

• Growth and evaluation of non-macromolecular crystals
• Space group determination
• Background theory to data acquisition for small molecules and inorganics
• Practical aspects of data collection
• Practical aspects of data processing
• Fourier syntheses
• Patterson syntheses and direct methods for crystal structure determination
• Charge flipping
• Refinement of inorganic, organic and metal-organic structures
• Derivation of results
• Random and systematic errors
• Twinning
• Validation of results
• Crystallographic databases (CSD, ICSD, etc)

Following on from the school there will be an optional 1 day hands on Olex2 online workshop on Sunday the 18^th of April 2021 (10:00-16.00).