Celebrating two milestones reached by scientists who conducted their research at the CMCF

Nov. 23, 2017

CMCF Users have now published 1,000 structures using data collected at the CMCF. There are also 500 peer-reviewed publications acknowledging data collected at the CMCF beamlines. We are pleased to announce that the 1,000th structure is the crystal structure of circumsporozoite protein aTSR domain in complex with 1710 antibody (PDB ID 6B0S, depicted in the image). This structure is part of Jean-Philippe Julien's research into developing a vaccine that prevents the malaria parasite from causing infections. Dr. Julien holds a Canada Research Chair in Structural Immunology and is a scientist in Molecular Medicine at The Hospital for Sick Children Research Institute, as well as assistant professor in the departments of biochemistry and immunology at the University of Toronto.

The 500th paper was the result of research by Mirek Cygler's laboratory at the University of Saskatchewan. Using crystallography as well as other techniques, they now have a better understanding of how iron-sulfur clusters are synthesized in the body. These clusters are key components of many proteins critical to life, and defects in the formation of the clusters can cause severe neurological and metabolic diseases, often with fatal outcomes. The findings were published in Nature Communications [Boniecki, MT; Freibert, SA; Mühlenhoff, U; Lill, R; Cygler, M (2017), Structure and functional dynamics of the mitochondrial Fe/S cluster synthesis complex, Nature Communications 8(1)] . Dr. Cygler holds a Canada Research Chair in Molecular Medicine Using Synchrotron Light and is a professor in the department of biochemistry at the University of Saskatchewan.