Remote access to crystallography beamlines at SSRL: novel tools for training, education and collaboration

Abstract

For the past five years, the Structural Molecular Biology group at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) has provided general users of the facility with fully remote access to the macromolecular crystallography beamlines. This was made possible by implementing fully automated beamlines with a flexible control system and an intuitive user interface, and by the development of the robust and efficient Stanford automated mounting robotic sample-changing system. The ability to control a synchrotron beamline remotely from the comfort of the home laboratory has set a new paradigm for the collection of high-quality X-ray diffraction data and has fostered new collaborative research, whereby a number of remote users from different institutions can be connected at the same time to the SSRL beamlines. The use of remote access has revolutionized the way in which scientists interact with synchrotron beamlines and collect diffraction data, and has also triggered a shift in the way crystallography students are introduced to synchrotron data collection and trained in the best methods for collecting high-quality data. SSRL provides expert crystallographic and engineering staff, state-of-the-art crystallography beamlines, and a number of accessible tools to facilitate data collection and in-house remote training, and encourages the use of these facilities for education, training, outreach and collaborative research.

Figure 1

Total number of samples mounted each year with the SAM system since its release in 2003. To date, over 300 000 samples have been screened by more than 100 research groups.

Figure 2

(a) The total number of groups with active proposals at SSRL (blue bars) and the number of research groups using remote access since its release in 2005 (purple bars). (b) The total number of remote starts (user groups starting a remote data-collection run) since 2005.

Figure 3

(a) Screen capture of a typical remote-access NX session showing multiple windows open, including BLU-ICE in the top left background, the MOSFLM graphical user interface on the bottom right, COOT (Emsley & Cowtan, 2004 ▶) at the top right and a WEB-ICE session in the left foreground. (b) Screen capture of the Screening tab from the BLU-ICE software. The spreadsheet at the top left has been loaded by the experimenter, and during initial screening the Crystal Analysis server updates the table with results, as shown.

Figure 4

Screen capture of the SMB home page. The main tabs across the top give access to a secondary page for Facilities (computing, software and the remote desktop), the User Guide plus video tutorials, the beamline schedule, forms for shipping Dewars and research-related links. The left-hand side menu changes to list specific links as each secondary page is uploaded. Some fundamental characteristics of the seven available beamlines are tabulated, along with quick links to commonly used web pages.