Speaker
Dr
Alvina Vazina
(Institute of theoretical and experimental biophysics, RAS)
Description
In this report the results of long-term works - more than 40 years - in the field of structural biology of tissue with synchrotron radiation (SR) usage will be presented.
We were pioneers in the field of SR use for nanostructural researches of biological tissues. C.S. Holmes was the first to demonstrate the advantages of SR in studying the structure of biological objects in 1971 on the DESY station (Hamburg). We began to conduct systematic experimental works with SR in 1972. At that time, there were only two accelerators available for use as sources of SR in the X-ray range: the ARUS synchrotron at the Yerevan Institute of Physics, and the VEPP-3 storage ring at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, which is still a world-class experimental SR site.
The creation and development of a method for high-speed small-angle X-ray diffractometry must be considered a fundamental methodological success of this period, since the minimum exposition time was reduced to a fraction of a second. Difraction cinema for the first time has been created by the large team of scientists from Novosibirsk and Pushchino, which for many years ranked ahead of other laboratories abroad. Last decade works are conducted on the small-angle stations DIKSI (Siberia-2, NRC «Kurchatov institute», Moscow).
SR is promising for application in structural biology. Specific features of SR (relatively high intensity, broad radiation spectrum, and coherence) allow us to obtain structural data on objects whose sizes range from fractions of a nanometer to several centimeters. In living systems, we can study the functional range from single molecules to cells, tissues, and even organs, so that the object can be characterized comprehensively.
The research was supported by RFBR-Moscow region Grant #14-44-03667.
Primary author
Dr
Alvina Vazina
(Institute of theoretical and experimental biophysics, RAS)
