10 years of protein crystallography at AR-NW12A beamline

Abstract

The exponential growth of protein crystallography can be observed in the continuously increasing demand for synchrotron beam time, both from academic and industrial users. Nowadays, the screening of a profusion of sample crystals for more and more projects is being implemented by taking advantage of fully automated procedures at every level of the experiments. The insertion device AR-NW12A beamline is one of the five macromolecular crystallography (MX) beamlines at the Photon Factory (PF). Currently the oldest MX beamline operational at the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), the end-station was launched in 2001 as part of an upgrade of the PF Advanced Ring. Since its commissioning, AR-NW12A has been operating as a high-throughput beamline, slowly evolving to a multipurpose end-station for MX experiments. The development of the beamline took place about a decade ago, in parallel with a drastic development of protein crystallography and more general synchrotron technology. To keep the beamline up-to-date and competitive with other MX stations in Japan and worldwide, new features have been constantly added, with the goal of user friendliness of the various beamline optics and other instruments. Here we describe the evolution of AR-NW12A for its tenth anniversary. We also discuss the plans for upgrades for AR-NW12A, the future objectives in terms of the beamline developments, and especially the strong desire to open the beamline to a larger user community.