Wagner Group at Diamond

overview

Wagner Group exploits the long-wavelength macromolecular crystallography beamline I23 at Diamond Light Source. It is a unique facility for solving the crystallographic phase problem and to identify and locate lighter atoms of biological relevance such as S, P, Cl, K and Ca in crystal structures.

Technology development:

Over the past years, the Wagner Group has pioneered long-wavelength in-vacuum cryo-crystallography in developing the I23 beamline. They have a strong expertise in cryogenics and sample environments.  As sample absorption is a major limitation in long-wavelength crystallography, they are actively working on analytical absorption corrections based on tomographic reconstructions. An alternative approach is to use high power lasers to remove all non-diffracting materials around the crystals and shape them into regular shapes to facilitate absorption corrections.

Biological themes

Wagner Group has a strong background in X-ray crystallography and is studying diverse projects ranging from membrane protein transporters, viral membrane fusion to study of antibodies in cancer immunotherapy.