Since 2003, the Macromolecular Crystallography (MX) group at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB) has been operating three MX beamlines at the BESSY II storage ring in Berlin. These beamlines were established to support the emerging structural genomics initiatives founded in Germany, Europe, and overseas around the turn of the century. Over the past two decades, these beamlines have been continuously developed to enable state-of-the-art diffraction experiments and to provide supporting facilities such as a sample preparation laboratory, a spectroscopy laboratory, a Biosafety Level 1 laboratory and all necessary computing resources for the MX and chemical crystallography user community. Currently, more than 100 independent research groups from the greater Berlin area, Germany, and Europe utilize these beamlines. Over time, more than 4500 Protein Data Bank depositions have been accrued based on data collected at the beamlines. This paper presents historical aspects of the beamlines, their current status including their research output, and future directions.
Keywords: automation; chemical crystallography; crystal dehydration; crystallographic fragment screening; cyber attack; high-throughput crystallography; large-scale facility; macromolecular crystallography beamlines; synchrotron radiation; user operation.
open access.