Laue Workshop
9-11 October 2002
In an effort to help its growing group of Laue and time-resolved crystallography users BioCARS held a Laue Data Processing Workshop on October 9-11, 2002. 
Time-resolved macromolecular crystallography that utilizes Laue technique has been a major scientific area of interest for BioCARS since its foundation. In parallel with the design and construction of the BioCARS facility, BioCARS staff has been developing and testing methodology, strategies, essential instrumentation and software for time-resolved experiments (Moffat, Acta Cryst. A54, 833-841, 1998 [pdf] and Ren et al., J. Synch. Rad. 6, 891-917, 1999).
In the summer of 2000, BioCARS started the commissioning phase of Laue and ns time-resolved experiments at its insertion device beamline 14-ID. To introduce this still-novel technique to the wider structural biology community, BioCARS organized a workshop in March 2001 that welcomed an increasing number of enthusiastic users. This growing interest presented the BioCARS staff with the need to introduce laue users to the practical aspects of processing of Laue data. The Laue technique is not yet widely used in the structural biology community.
At the October workshop, ten participants from four universities were given an introduction to Laue data processing and latest Laue software developments by Zhong Ren of Renz Research, Inc., a former member of the BioCARS staff and the author of the package LaueView (Ren and Moffat, J. Appl. Cryst. 28, 461-481, 1995 [pdf]). The remaining time was devoted to practical sessions where each participant completed the analysis of a Laue data set following a step-by-step guide LaueView Basics, and assisted by the BioCARS staff Vukica Srajer, Tsu-yi Teng and Robert Henning.
The number of Laue and time-resolved experiments on 14-ID has been growing steadily as shown above.