Implementation and performance of SIBYLS: a dual endstation small-angle X-ray scattering and macromolecular crystallography beamline at the Advanced Light Source

The SIBYLS beamline (12.3.1) of the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, supported by the US Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health, is optimized for both small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and macromolecular crystallography (MX), making it unique among the world's mostly SAXS or MX dedicated beamlines. Since SIBYLS was commissioned, assessments of the limitations and advantages of a combined SAXS and MX beamline have suggested new strategies for integration and optimal data collection methods and have led to additional hardware and software enhancements. Features described include a dual mode monochromator [containing both Si(111) crystals and Mo/B(4)C multilayer elements], rapid beamline optics conversion between SAXS and MX modes, active beam stabilization, sample-loading robotics, and mail-in and remote data collection. These features allow users to gain valuable insights from both dynamic solution scattering and high-resolution atomic diffraction experiments performed at a single synchrotron beamline. Key practical issues considered for data collection and analysis include radiation damage, structural ensembles, alternative conformers and flexibility. SIBYLS develops and applies efficient combined MX and SAXS methods that deliver high-impact results by providing robust cost-effective routes to connect structures to biology and by performing experiments that aid beamline designs for next generation light sources.

Software for the high-throughput collection of SAXS data using an enhanced Blu-Ice/DCS control system

Biological small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) provides powerful complementary data for macromolecular crystallography (MX) by defining shape, conformation and assembly in solution. Although SAXS is in principle the highest throughput technique for structural biology, data collection is limited in practice by current data collection software. Here the adaption of beamline control software, historically developed for MX beamlines, for the efficient operation and high-throughput data collection at synchrotron SAXS beamlines is reported. The Blu-Ice GUI and Distributed Control System (DCS) developed in the Macromolecular Crystallography Group at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory has been optimized, extended and enhanced to suit the specific needs of the biological SAXS endstation at the SIBYLS beamline at the Advanced Light Source. The customizations reported here provide a potential route for other SAXS beamlines in need of robust and efficient beamline control software. As a great deal of effort and optimization has gone into crystallographic software, the adaption and extension of crystallographic software may prove to be a general strategy to provide advanced SAXS software for the synchrotron community. In this way effort can be put into optimizing features for SAXS rather than reproducing those that have already been successfully implemented for the crystallographic community.