After nearly three-year development, the CAS efforts in setting up a synchrotron radiation (SR) biological platform has paid off, concluded experts at a mid-term review panel on Nov. 23, 2004 at the CAS Institute of High Energy Physics (IHP).
With the support from CAS, a project to establish a SR biological platform and to study the method applied in analyzing biological macro-molecular crystal structure was launched in 2002. Now the project has reached the expected targets in instrumentation, methods and application, according to the jury.
The scientists have succeeded in making clear the structure of more than 20 proteins, including some world-renown ones such as the identification of the photo-captivating protein complex extracted from spinach and the main proteinase in the coronna-virus which has been found to be the pathogen of the SARS epidemic. They also invented a set of methods to treat the single-wavelength anomalous diffraction of proteins.
Experts say that the experience and research results attained from the platform's construction may be used in the development of the second facility to detect bio-macromolecular structures at the IHP and the bio-platform attached to the forthcoming Shanghai Light Source Program.
