NSF Award
2407251
An award is made to Saint Louis University (SLU) to acquire XtaLAB Synergy-R single crystal diffractometer to enable users to collect high quality diffraction data from single crystals of organic compounds and biological macromolecules with high efficiency and a significantly reduced consumption of energy and water. Thirteen groups from different SLU colleges and one from the Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville rely on the structural facility at SLU for their research leading to breakthrough discoveries impacting society, economy, and human health. Many projects are collaborations with regional and national universities as well as with industrial partners. The advanced low maintenance design and user-friendly interface makes this system particularly suitable for educational purposes to train undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and high school students and teachers. It will increase the productivity and quality of educational efforts at SLU and other institutions in a greater St. Louis region, will contribute to the teaching of new generation of STEM talents, and will stimulate building partnerships between academia and industry.<br/><br/>The new diffractometer will advance cutting edge research of multiple groups from SLU and regional colleges aiming at groundbreaking discoveries in several fields critical for economy and human health. Those include a wide spectrum of research fields such as DNA recombination and repair; blood coagulation; autoimmune complementation; electron transfer; hepatitis B virus replication; discovery of orphan nuclear receptors; retroviral integration; mechanism of prokaryotic heme enzymes; protein translation regulation; novel function of ubiquitin-like membrane proteins; mechanism of plant DNA demythyltransferases; earth-abundant, non-toxic first row transition metal catalysts; glycosylation reaction and the synthesis of complex glycans.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
