Word: synchrotrons
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...ready for use, and another four are being designed. One of those, to be devoted to medical imaging, will produce images vastly more detailed than conventional X-ray images. It could also be used in the treatment of patients: there have been promising results from international animal trials using synchrotron X rays to irradiate cancer tumors without affecting healthy surrounding tissue...
...five existing beamlines will swing into use from this month, when the first group of selected research teams arrive from Australia and New Zealand to tap into synchrotron radiation, which covers a broad spectrum including infrared, visible light and X rays. A handful of experts have already begun road-testing the device, and their projects are an early showcase of the dizzying range of topics set to be explored - the infrared beamline, for instance, is being used to study mouse eggs in an effort to pinpoint the best time to fertilize human eggs in IVF; to investigate the facial-tumor...
...focusing on an enigmatic protein, amyloid beta, and what he suspects are its toxic effects on the brains of people with Alzheimer's. In the international race to uncover amyloid beta's molecular structure - the crucial first step in finding out how to block its pathological effects - synchrotron X rays are a crucial tool. The molecules are too small to be imaged individually, so Varghese must grow them into crystals, each just 1/10,000th the width of a human hair, which are then bombarded with X rays. The ways in which the crystals absorb or scatter the radiation give clues...
...Last year the CSIRO structural biologist took a batch of crystals, the product of months of painstaking work, to a synchrotron in Japan, only to discover they'd been destroyed in transit. But such disappointments, as well as the increasing difficulty of taking biological samples across security-conscious international borders, are over for Australasian scientists now that they have a latest-generation synchrotron in their backyard. So are the frustrations of traveling to facilities in the U.S. or Europe for a few days of precious beam time, then flying home to wait months for another opportunity...
...back foot," says Varghese. Now he need only make a half-hour drive from his laboratory in Melbourne's inner north. "What once took me several years to do you could probably do in a few months" at the new facility, Varghese says. Given that the synchrotron has a life span of around 30 years, there's plenty of time, then, for a lot of light - and hopefully a great deal of illumination...