ELIAS TANNOUS

LEBANON

Being a student in The Molecular Biotechnology Laboratory (KANAYA Lab), Department of Material and Life Science, Graduate School of Engineering at Osaka University, I had the chance to go abroad for a one month internship at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, which is operated by Stanford University for the US Department of Energy, California, to join the JCSG Structure Determination Core (Joint Center for Structural Genomics), and experience working in their accelerator facility, SSRL (Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource).

Joining the Structure Determination core at JCSG, which is led by Dr. Ashley Deacon, was a unique experience, because of the quality of work and level of experience held by the scientists working in this group, and their selected targets in the field of protein crystallography. During my stay, I had a very fruitful time observing and experimenting steps concerning protein structure determination. First I spent some time with a beamline scientist, on the beam line, observing how they prepare and align the beam for data collection, she gave me an overview of how each piece of instrument in the hutch works, from the mounting robot, to the ion chambers, slits, filters, cryo stream passing through the goniometer and to the detector. After that, I spent some time with another scientist, learning how to collect and process data from protein crystals, and design a strategy in order to collect a whole set of data. The majority of time was with a senior scientist, who went over with me through the whole process of processing data, solving structure, generating models, and structure refinement, using several software packs, and from simple to more advanced strategies, putting me on the track for further practicing regarding structure refinement.

This unique month was an exclusive opportunity to discuss with other scientists in different part of the world, who share the same concerns, topics in my same field, and to get enthusiasm in order to further progress in my own research.

 

JCSG Structure Determination Core, group members