SBIR Phase I: New Convergent X-Ray Beam Based System for Protein Crystallography

This Small Business Innovative Research Phase I project proposesto develop a new approach to protein x-ray crystallography using convergent beams. This new technology is based on the development of convergent beam x-ray optics and of protein diffraction theory with 2-dimensional convergent x-ray beams. Compared with conventional collimating optics, convergent beam optics can provide x-ray beams with orders of magnitude higher flux density, which is crucial for structure measurements with small protein crystals (less than 100 um) using low-power laboratory-based x-ray sources. In this Phase I project, simulation diffraction patterns for different protein crystals will be generated by a new software package CBMPRO to theoretically evaluate the feasibility for determination of protein crystal quality, unit cell, space group, and structure. The commercial application of this project is in the area of proteomics.