EXPO&more International Workshop

Volume 27, Number 4, 2019

ISSN 1067-0696

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19 Dec 2019
Catalina Ruiz-Pérez (1957–2019)
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19 Dec 2019
Fourth International School on Aperiodic Crystals
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Fourth International School on Aperiodic Crystals

The fourth edition of the International School on Aperiodic Crystals (ISAC4) took place from 8 to 14 September 2019 in Portbail in Normandy, France. Organized under the aegis of the Commission of Aperiodic Crystals (CAC) of the IUCr, it has been labeled a “thematic school” by the Institute of Physics of the CNRS and “Euroschool” by the CmetaC network; it also received decisive support from the Normandy Region. Various other support, including from the IUCr and the French Crystallographic Association, made it possible to set up a scholarship system and to reduce the burden of enrolments in the overall budget of the school.

ISAC4 was organized within the VVF (Villages Vacances Familles) of Portbail to allow accommodation at the school. This unity of place was desired in order to encourage exchanges between participants and teachers. A total of 32 students (from France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, UK, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Poland, Argentina, USA, Costa Rica and Japan) followed the theoretical lessons and tutorials given by nine international experts (from France, Israel, Germany, Czech Republic and Japan) in the field of aperiodic materials.

The school programme was constructed so as to gradually introduce the different concepts inherent in the field of aperiodic materials; tutorials allowing students to apply the concepts discussed were offered throughout the week. Thus, after a detailed introduction to aperiodic crystals (modulated structures, immeasurable composites, quasicrystals) placed in the context of classical crystalline compounds, the very particular case of quasicrystals was discussed by an approach using Landau theory. The formalism of the superspaces developed for the treatment of aperiodic phases was presented; this formalism makes it possible, via the introduction of additional dimensions, to recover the three-dimensional periodicity absent in aperiodic compounds: physical space is then called "external space" or "parallel space" and the additional dimensions "internal space" or "perpendicular space". All of these notions were the subject of a tutorial during which the students were able to understand by geometric constructions the formalism of superspaces and the almost crystalline state by trying to achieve a Penrose tiling from ad hoc geometric pieces. All the concepts necessary for the structural determination of aperiodic crystals were then addressed: symmetry in superspace, indexing of diffraction diagrams with a tutorial that allowed students to work on real diffraction data from monocrystals, and structural resolution theories for modulated phases and quasicrystals. At this stage the students were guided in the resolution of aperiodic structures during an afternoon. As the structural determination in superspace leads only to a model with (3 + n) abstruse dimensions, the tools enabling comprehension of the final structural result for all novices were proposed. The dynamic aspects of the different types of aperiodic crystals were then described and a mode of excitation characteristic of the aperiodic order was defined: the phason. Finally, after a more theoretical description of the electronic properties of aperiodic surfaces and of the symmetry of quasicrystals, the aperiodic magnetic order was presented; a tutorial allowed the students to tackle the problem of solving an immeasurable magnetic structure.

These various lessons were "embellished" by various events such as a poster session allowing students to present their research work, an afternoon excursion with a guide to visit the harbor of Portbail and discover this Norman ecosystem, a gala dinner and a discovery of regional products. These social events aim to develop relationships between participants and create a bond in the community. A WhatsApp discussion queue "ISAC4" was also created by the students.

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19 Dec 2019
Lab in a DAC – high-pressure crystallography as a powerful tool to study chemical interactions and chemical reactions
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Lab in a DAC – high-pressure crystallography as a powerful tool to study chemical interactions and chemical reactions

Figure 1. The author of this commentary with Andrzej Katrusiak in 1999 at the 18th IUCr Congress in Glasgow.

It is my great pleasure to write a scientific commentary on a recent review by Andrzej Katrusiak (Katrusiak, 2019). Time goes fast, and I have hardly noticed the two decades after the IUCr Congress in Glasgow in 1999, where I first met Andrzej in person (Fig. 1) and we could exchange our experience in high-pressure single-crystal diffraction studies of intermolecular interactions in the crystals of organic compounds. I had just entered this field in which Andrzej has been already active as one of the pioneers (Katrusiak, 1991). There were not so many people at that time who were interested in this topic.

Since that time both the hardware [diffractometers, diamond anvil cells (DACs)] and the software have developed to such an extent that a single-crystal high-pressure X-ray diffraction experiment can provide data of a completeness and precision that enables structure solution and refinement for unknown phases of great complexity, so that even an electron charge density analysis becomes possible (Casati et al., 2017). Detailed studies of chemical bonds, intermolecular interactions, subtle details of structural transformations of organic crystals under extreme conditions became mainstream in chemical crystallography (Boldyreva, 2018). Research on hydrostatic compression can also be very helpful in order to understand the structural transformations at ambient pressure (Zakharov & Boldyreva, 2019). The sample sealed in the DAC can be compressed and heated to the chosen starting pressure and temperature and then processed by changing their values. In these changing conditions one can investigate the stability regions of a compound and its phase transitions, and this information can be used for drawing the pressure–temperature (p–T) phase diagrams, in a similar way as done in high-pressure thermal analysis and calorimetry. The extreme conditions in the DAC can be applied for performing chemical reactions which otherwise would require catalysts, would proceed with much smaller yields or would not proceed at all.

The recent review by Katrusiak (2019) gives a personal overview of this exciting field. When DACs were first designed and manufactured 60 years ago, the main interest of researchers was focused on studying minerals and inorganic compounds. The progress of solving structures of organic compounds at high pressures can be illustrated by an increase in the number of crystal structures deposited in the Cambridge Structural Database (Groom et al., 2016), reaching 2500 entries by the end of 2019. One relatively short article cannot cover the whole variety of high-pressure crystallographic experiments, the new designs of high-pressure equipment, computer programs for theoretical computations for high-pressure structures and for the interpretation of high-pressure data. Therefore, this research perspectives article focuses on selected aspects most relevant to crystal engineering and the research results changing the understanding of concepts in materials chemistry, undoubtedly biased by this author's personal interests. Still, the author and his research group have performed such extensive and variable research at high pressures throughout the decades that even being based mainly on a personal experience, the paper gives a balanced and multi-faceted overview of the field.

In the early years of high-pressure X-ray diffraction studies a researcher was excited to find a new high-pressure polymorph and to solve its structure. Nowadays, the challenge is to find some universal laws and rules of high-pressure transformations. The paper by Katrusiak (2019) suggests some of such possible rules. In particular, the author discusses the role of pressure-transmitting fluids in the compression of solids, the reasons why compression on cooling and on increasing pressure can be drastically different, and why the rule of inverse effects of temperature and pressure that has been formulated for inorganic solids often does not hold for organic compounds, why the inverse relation rule does not apply to the symmetry relations between low-pressure and high-pressure phases. The problem of predicting if a multi-component crystalline phase will form or, on the contrary, decompose on hydrostatic compression is discussed using solvates, hydrates, salts and co-crystals as examples. The increase in coordination numbers in the high-pressure phases as compared to the ambient-pressure counterparts is discussed and compared with an alternative possibility of increasing the crystal density by filling in the voids by guest molecules of penetrating fluids. Structural effects induced by high pressure in crystals can be so strong that they cannot be regarded solely as a physical transformation, as they change the chemical character of substances, even before the chemical reaction actually takes place. For example, the bond lengths, molecular conformation, coordination and interactions can be reversibly changed and correlated with the properties of materials under study. Thus, high pressure can induce changes in the chemical bonding similar to those characteristic for chemical reactions. This can considerably facilitate the research on functional materials in the search for their structure–properties relationships. Examples of such transformations are also given.

In general, this paper by Katrusiak represents a significant step forward in attracting attention to the new possibilities that high-pressure crystallography opens for chemical crystallography and the research of molecular materials. I would recommend it as a very informative and stimulating read to a broad community.

References

Boldyreva, E. V. (2018). In Understanding Intermolecular Interactions in the Solid State – Approaches and Techniques, Monographs in Supramolecular Chemistry No. 26, edited by D. Chopra, pp. 32–97. UK: Royal Society of Chemistry.

Casati, N., Genoni, A., Meyer, B., Krawczuk, A. & Macchi, P. (2017). Acta Cryst. B73, 584–597.

Groom, C. R., Bruno, I. J., Lightfoot, M. P. & Ward, S. C. (2016). Acta Cryst. B72, 171–179.

Katrusiak, A. (1991). Cryst. Res. Technol. 26, 523–531.

Katrusiak, A. (2019). Acta Cryst. B75, 918–926.

Zakharov, B. A. & Boldyreva, E. V. (2019). CrystEngComm, 21, 10–22.

This article was originally published in Acta Cryst. B75, 916–917.

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18 Dec 2019
A potential difference for single-particle cryo-EM
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A potential difference for single-particle cryo-EM

Figure 1. Three of the five single-particle specimens studied using 100 keV electrons in Naydenova et al. (2019) showing relative sizes: hepatitis B virus capsid (cyan), DPS (green) and haemoglobin (red). The vertical dimension of the bounding box is 300 Å.

Advances in experimental and computational methods for single-particle cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) have transformed the field of structural biology by making it possible to calculate high-resolution maps of proteins and nucleic acid assemblies without crystals. Efficient electron detectors and movie-mode data collection have been key to the resolution jumps that have been achieved for low molecular mass, asymmetric specimens. However, cryo-EM has not yet reached its theoretical limit for structure determination from small numbers of particles or from small molecular mass specimens (Henderson, 1995). Better imaging and computation together are helping to identify and hopefully find solutions to problems, such as beam-induced movement, that may further enhance this already successful technique.

Cryo-EM structure determination proceeds by recording and averaging low dose images of frozen-hydrated specimens embedded in a thin layer of vitreous ice. The structural information in images is related to the ratio of useful elastic electron scattering events to inelastic events that only cause damage and do not contribute to image contrast. A recent study (Peet et al., 2019) reports new measurements of these electron–specimen interactions for 100 keV and 300 keV electrons, the energy range of electrons commonly used in biological microscopy. The study concludes that for a thin specimen of thickness of about 300 Å, e.g. protein molecules in a somewhat larger ice layer, the optimal choice of voltage is 100 kV. For thicker specimens, including many studied in the growing field of cryotomography, higher voltage is beneficial.

This conclusion contrasts recent practice in single-particle cryo-EM, where higher electron acceleration voltages have been favoured because of their greater penetration, reduced multiple scattering and less sensitivity to electron optical aberrations and specimen charging. Indeed, most high-resolution single-particle structures come from 300 keV instruments equipped with a coherent field emission gun (FEG) source and with direct electron detectors (and often an energy filter). There have been studies emphasizing that high-resolution structures can be obtained at 200 keV (Herzik et al., 2017, 2019). Furthermore, the efficient direct electron detectors in current use in cryo-EM have been optimized for 300 keV and perform well at 200 keV. At lower energies, backscattering of electrons leads to degradation of signal.

In the article by Naydenova et al. in this issue of IUCrJ (Naydenova et al., 2019), the same research team has followed their earlier analysis with a practical demonstration that structure determination of challenging biological specimens can be performed using 100 keV electrons. Their experiments combine all the necessary instrument features and show that many of the problems associated with low voltage can be addressed. The study was performed on a 200 keV microscope with a coherent FEG electron source, though operated at 100 keV. Commercial instruments with lower voltage (a maximum 100 or 120 kV) are not equipped with FEG sources. A key feature of the new study is the use of a hybrid-pixel detector (Faruqi & McMullan, 2018), developed for X-ray diffraction studies, the Dectris EIGER (Dinapoli et al., 2011). Imaging and reconstruction are applied to five single-particle specimens of varying sizes and masses: hepatitis B virus capsid, bacterial 70S ribosome, DPS (DNA protection during starvation protein), catalase and haemoglobin (see Fig. 1). Notably, the DPS protein (220 kDa) was resolved to 3.4 Å.

Additional concerns have caused pessimism about high-resolution work at low voltage. There is a greater effect of beam tilt on image phases at lower voltage. However, beam tilt, as well as other aberrations, is modelled successfully by the software used for reconstruction in this study, RELION-3 (Zivanov et al., 2018). Another potential problem at low voltage is that the depth of field (or equivalently, the greater curvature of the Ewald sphere) becomes important for thick specimens at high resolution, and the images are no longer true projections of the structure. Though not a concern at the resolutions reported in the present study, computational correction has been demonstrated (Russo & Henderson, 2018; Wolf et al., 2006). The effect of chromatic aberration is worse at lower voltage and ultimately limits resolution.

This is just the beginning for high-resolution work at 100 keV: though the performance of the detector was excellent, its area was small (1030 × 514 pixels), so an inefficient way of obtaining the large number of particles ideally required for high-resolution work. Nor did the detector count individual electrons. The new results reported here should fuel research on the detectors optimized for lower voltage and microscope platforms that possess features proven to be important in their higher voltage relatives.

The authors describe requirements for a future 'ultimate' single-particle microscope operating at 100 kV for structure determination to better than 2 Å. With coherent illumination and a large pixel format electron counting detector, the authors specify several ways in which the required small chromatic aberration may be achieved. But perhaps of greater immediate impact, the authors propose a microscope optimized for single-particle data collection to 3 Å or somewhat better, still capable of obtaining near-atomic maps and models, but also suitable for specimen screening. In many investigations, as in the one reported here, sample preparation is not uniformly ideal. Until sample preparation problems are solved more generally, optimization requires significant time on a lower-end screening instrument, but can ensure subsequent success on a higher-end instrument. To be predictive for success at high resolution, the standard for a screening instrument is still quite high. More than showing the shape of particles in ice, it ideally allows one to detect high-resolution features (secondary structure) in 2D image averages, an early step in image analysis, and identify a wide range of orientations, a requirement for isotropic resolution. Voltage is a surrogate for size and cost, both for the instrument and environment to house it. The authors envision that such affordable instruments (and available software) will make cryo-EM more widely accessible. This will reduce some of the (high) tension associated with the rapid growth of the field.

References

Dinapoli, R., Bergamaschi, A., Henrich, B., Horisberger, R., Johnson, I., Mozzanica, A., Schmid, E., Schmitt, B., Schreiber, A., Shi, X. & Theidel, G. (2011). Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 650, 79–83.

Faruqi, A. R. & McMullan, G. (2018). Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. A, 878, 180–190.

Henderson, R. (1995). Q. Rev. Biophys. 28, 171–193.

Herzik, M. A. Jr, Wu, M. & Lander, G. C. (2017). Nat. Methods, 14, 1075–1078.

Herzik, M. A. Jr, Wu, M. & Lander, G. C. (2019). Nat. Commun. 10, 1032.

Naydenova, K., McMullan, G., Peet, M. J., Lee, Y., Edwards, P. C., Chen, S., Leahy, E., Scotcher, S., Henderson, R. & Russo, C. J. (2019). IUCrJ, 6, 1086–1098.

Peet, M. J., Henderson, R. & Russo, C. J. (2019). Ultramicroscopy, 203, 125–131.

Russo, C. J. & Henderson, R. (2018). Ultramicroscopy, 187, 26–33.

Wolf, M., DeRosier, D. J. & Grigorieff, N. (2006). Ultramicroscopy, 106, 376–382.

Zivanov, J., Nakane, T., Forsberg, B. O., Kimanius, D., Hagen, W. J. H., Lindahl, E. & Scheres, S. H. W. (2018). Elife, 7, e42166.

This article was originally published in IUCrJ (2019). 6, 988–989.

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18 Dec 2019
Studies of enzyme systems rewarded with the Aminoff Prize
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Studies of enzyme systems rewarded with the Aminoff Prize

Douglas Rees (left, photo credit: Caltech) and Jian-Ren Shen (photo credit: Okayama University).

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has awarded the Gregori Aminoff Prize in Crystallography to Douglas Rees (California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA) and Jian-Ren Shen (Okayama University, Japan) for “their fundamental contributions to the understanding of biological redox metal clusters”. The award ceremony and commemorating lecture will take place at the Academy’s annual meeting held in Stockholm on 30–31 March 2020.

Jian-Ren Shen has studied a photosynthesis enzyme in plants and photosynthetic bacteria, called photosystem II, while Douglas Rees has studied nitrogenases, which fix atmospheric nitrogen and are found in some bacteria. However, studying these two enzyme systems is challenging. Both systems transfer electrons between different molecules using metalloclusters to temporarily store the electrons. In photosystem II this is a cluster of manganese ions and in nitrogenase it is usually iron. The X-ray radiation used in the study of these systems’ structures tends to change the oxidation state of the metal ions, which means the image produced is not always the same as the way enzymes look in their natural state. Nitrogenase has another difficulty, as the entire system is oxygen-sensitive and must be protected at every stage of the purification and crystallisation process.

For photosystem II, one way of removing the problem is to use short pulses of high-intensity X-ray radiation. This allows enough information about the structure to be collected during one pulse. No redox processes can take place in the short duration of the pulse, and the information from the experiment thus describes the undamaged system.

Jian-Ren Shen and Douglas Rees lead research groups that have succeeded in studying numerous different states in enzymes, which has led to an understanding of how nature drives photosynthesis and fixes atmospheric nitrogen using enzymatic processes.

The Gregory Aminoff Prize rewards a documented individual contribution to the field of crystallography, and has been awarded to Swedish and foreign researchers since 1979. The prize amount is SEK 120,000. More information is available here.

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18 Dec 2019
Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 awarded for development of lithium-ion batteries
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Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 awarded for development of lithium-ion batteries

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 to John B. Goodenough (University of Texas at Austin, USA), M. Stanley Whittingham (Binghamton University, State University of New York, USA) and Akira Yoshino (Asahi Kasei Corporation, Tokyo, Japan, and Meijo University, Nagoya, Japan) “for the development of lithium-ion batteries”.

Lithium-ion batteries have revolutionised our lives since entering the market in 1991. They are lightweight, rechargeable and powerful, and are used globally to power portable electronics - everything from mobile phones and laptops through pacemakers to electric vehicles. They can also store significant amounts of energy from renewable sources such as solar and wind power, making possible a fossil-fuel-free society.

The foundation of the lithium-ion battery was laid during the oil crisis in the 1970s. Stanley Whittingham worked on developing energy technologies that did not rely on fossil fuels. He started to research superconductors and discovered an extremely energy-rich material, titanium disulfide, which can intercalate lithium ions and which he used to create an innovative cathode in a lithium battery. The anode was partially made from metallic lithium, which has a strong drive to release electrons. The resultant device's potential was just over 2 V but the metallic lithium made the battery too explosive to be viable.

John Goodenough predicted that the cathode would have even greater potential if it was made using a metal oxide instead of a metal sulfide. After a systematic search, he demonstrated in 1980 that cobalt oxide with intercalated lithium ions can produce as much as 4 V. This was an important breakthrough and would lead to much more powerful batteries. With Goodenough’s cathode as a basis, Akira Yoshino created the first commercially viable lithium-ion battery in 1985 (illustrated). Rather than using reactive lithium in the anode, he used petroleum coke, a carbon material that, like the cathode’s cobalt oxide, can intercalate lithium ions. The result was a lightweight, hardwearing battery that could be charged hundreds of times before its performance deteriorated. The advantage of lithium-ion batteries is that they are not based upon chemical reactions that break down the electrodes, but upon lithium ions flowing back and forth between the anode and cathode.

See the winners' research in IUCr journals here.

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17 Dec 2019
Cyrus Chothia (1942–2019)
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Cyrus Chothia (1942–2019)

Cyrus Chothia, former Group Leader and until recently emeritus scientist in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division, died on 26 November 2019. Cyrus pioneered the use of computational methods to study the structure and function of proteins, and the evolution of genomes, which led to the birth of structural bioinformatics and computational genomics. His collaborations with several scientists, both at the LMB and elsewhere, helped to develop a wide variety of principles and computational methods, including developing a classification system of protein structures. He was an inspiration to many, particularly in the field of bioinformatics, and much admired by friends and colleagues.

"At the LMB, and throughout the world, Cyrus’ influence, which he preferred to exert through quiet determination, was profound and long-lasting. The successes of the genomics and structural biology revolutions are unthinkable without Cyrus’ contributions,” said Jan Löwe, Director of the LMB.

Cyrus was born on 19 February 1942. He studied chemistry at the University of Durham, graduating in 1965 and then undertook an MSc in crystallography at Birkbeck College London. He completed his PhD, under the supervision of Peter Pauling at University College London, on the structure and function of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in 1970, before arriving as a postdoctoral researcher at the LMB.

In 1973 Cyrus undertook a ‘scientific grand tour’, spending time with Fred Richards at Yale, Michael Levitt at the Weizmann Institute and Joel Janin at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. With Michael, he developed the “all-α, all-β, α/β and α+β” classification of protein structures. With Joel, he determined the principles that underlie protein–protein recognition and produced models that explain how secondary structures pack in proteins. These principles have been instrumental in interpreting the molecular basis of various diseases.

Cyrus returned to England in 1976 and for the next 14 years was attached to both the University College London and the LMB. Between 1980 and 1990 he was the EPA Cephalosporin Fund Senior Research Fellow of the Royal Society. With colleague Arthur Lesk, he showed that proteins adapt to mutations by changes in structure, described the mechanisms that transmit information between distant sites in proteins and demonstrated that there is a small repertoire of main-chain conformations for immunoglobulin hypervariable regions and that those present in an antibody can be predicted from their sequence.

In September 1990, Cyrus became a Group Leader at the LMB. In 1992 he proposed that most proteins are built of domains that come from a small number of families. He collaborated with Alexey Murzin, Steven Brenner and Tim Hubbard to create the SCOP database, a periodic table for all known protein structures, and with Julian Gough to create the SUPERFAMILY database, which uses hidden Markov models to identify protein sequences that are related to those with known structures.

Cyrus’ innovative approach in applying his understanding of protein structures to completely sequenced genomes of organisms provided new insights into cellular systems. His work on eukaryotes showed that the number of members in the ~200 superfamilies, of the 1,200 that were known, correlates with the complexity of the organisms in which they occur. The increases in these superfamilies play a major role in increasing biological complexity, which is fundamental in generating the diversity of life forms.

"It is a great loss to the scientific community. Cyrus’ contributions shaped how scientists approach biological questions with the use of data. He pursued this bold and unconventional path of enquiry to study structures and genomes at a time when it was unknown that data driven approaches could have such an impact on our understanding of organisms. For many of us, he was also an inspiring mentor,” said M. Madan Babu, a group leader at the LMB.

Cyrus was elected to EMBO in 1998 and became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2000. In 2015, he was awarded the highly prestigious international Dan David Prize and the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award, both for his work in the field of bioinformatics. He has long been recognised as a leader in computational biology and bioinformatics and has mentored over 21 scientists (19 PhD students and 2 postdocs) during his career, several of whom have gone on to become leaders in the field of bioinformatics.

This obituary has been republished from the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology websit e.

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13 Dec 2019
32nd European Crystallography Meeting
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32nd European Crystallography Meeting

The 11th Max Perutz Prize was presented to Elspeth Garman (centre) at the Opening Ceremony by ECA President Udo Heinemann (right) and the chair of the Max Perutz Prize Committee and ECA Vice President Marijana Đaković.

The 32nd European Crystallographic Meeting (ECM32) took place in the beautiful city of Vienna, Austria, from 18 to 23 August 2019, and gathered 1061 crystallographers from 48 countries, including more than 200 students and 76 exhibitors.

(l-r) Klaudia Hradil, Kristina Djinovic-Carugo and Ronald Miletich, Chairs of the ECM32 Organizing Committee, open the meeting.

The Opening Ceremony was held in the historic Main Building of the University of Vienna, the conference venue. This site, located within Vienna's historic centre, and with its numerous lecture halls and impressive ceremonial chamber rooms, offered a unique and historical flair during the conference. The meeting attendees were welcomed by Udo Heinemann, President of the European Crystallographic Association (ECA); Arndt von Haeseler, Dean of the Center of Molecular Biology and Director of Max Perutz Labs (a representative of the Rectorate of the University of Vienna); Johannes Fröhlich, Vice-Rector for Research of the TU Wien; João Alves, Vice-Dean of Faculty of Earth Sciences, Geography and Astronomy (UNIVIE); Veronika Somoza, Vice-Dean of Faculty of Chemistry (UNIVIE); Karlheinz Schwarz, National Committee for Crystallography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences; and Kristina Djinovic Carugo, Klaudia Hradil and Ronald Miletich, Chairs of ECM32. During the Opening Ceremony, the 11th Max Perutz Prize was awarded to Elspeth Garman (University of Oxford, UK), for her contribution to the field of macromolecular crystallography. In her award lecture, she addressed the development of methods for cryo-crystallography and methods for monitoring and mitigating radiation damage in protein crystals. The ceremony was accompanied by several musical interludes provided by the Pacher family brass septet Mission ImBRASSible.

Participants during the lunch break.

Over the four days of the conference, the attendees enjoyed an attractive scientific programme consisting of 48 microsymposia and 16 keynote lectures, and two poster sessions based on more than 780 submitted abstracts, covering the latest advances in crystallography and related sciences. The programme was launched by the plenary lecture ‘Prokaryotic Cytoskeletons’ given by Jan Löwe (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK), and the attendees were then able to enjoy four vibrant days of exciting science, a number of lunchtime meetings (Crystallographic Software Fayre and a variety of sponsored luncheon workshops) and several well-attended social events.

The Conference Dinner at Schönbrunn Palace Orangery.

The Conference Dinner took place in the orangery of the famous Schönbrunn Palace, the main summer residence of the Habsburg Emperors, which accommodated over 300 attendees. The Young Crystallographers Mixer took place on the 6th Floor Rooftop Terrace of the TU Wien where over 70 enthusiastic participants had a chance to relax and make new friends with the help of a light informal dinner and DJ entertainment. The attendees had also an opportunity to enjoy famous classical music pieces by great Austrian composers, performed by the TU Wien Orchestra in the wonderful atmosphere of the Votivkirche, located close to the conference venue. Social events were complemented by the Viennese Waltz Dancing Course, taking place at the lunchtime breaks, and a number of organized excursions and tours, among which there were tours to MedAustron in Wiener Neustadt and to the Atominstitut of the TU Wien.

The organizers at the Conference Dinner.

After its successful launch at ECM30 in Basel, the Science Slam was organised again at ECM32. The best and most entertaining 3-minute presentation, determined by the loudest applause from the audience, received an award sponsored by Stoe & Cie GmbH.

At ECM32, the Alajos Kálmán Prize was awarded for the first time. The prize was established by the Hungarian Chemical Society and endorsed by ECA, and was awarded to Luigi Nassimbeni (University of Cape Town, South Africa).

IUCr Travel Award recipients at the Closing Ceremony.

The scientific programme was closed by the plenary lecture 'Quantum Crystallographic Studies of Advanced Materials' given by Bo Brummerstedt Iversen (Aarhus University, Denmark). At the Closing Ceremony, poster prizes were awarded to 16 young scientists (the list is available here). Besides the main conference, 15 well-attended satellite workshops were held at TU Wien:

26th WIEN2K Workshop
X-ray Spectrometry
Data Science Skills in Publishing – IUCr Committee on Data
CCP4 Structure Solution Workshop
MaThCryst Satellite Meeting
Neutron Scattering and Imaging
CrysAC Workshop – IUCr Commission on Crystallography in Art and Cultural Heritage
IUCr and ECA High Pressure Workshop
Young Crystallographers Satellite Meeting
Olex2 Workshop
Total Scattering Analysis with DISCUS
European Crystallographic Computing Forum – SIG-9
Fixed Target Serial Crystallography
Low Resolution Structure Determination with Phenix
Crystal Engineering using the Cambridge Structural Database

ECM32 continued an important initiative, started at ECM31 in Oviedo, to provide a free child-care facility for children of in-advance registered attendees, and the meeting gathered a total of 1231 participants, including children, accompanying persons and volunteering students.

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The IUCr Newsletter (ISSN 1067-0696; coden IUC-NEB) is published electronically by the International Union of Crystallography. Feature articles, meeting announcements and reports, information on research or other items of potential interest to crystallographers may be submitted to the Editors at any time. Items will be selected for publication on the basis of suitability, content, style, timeliness and appeal.

IUCr Newsletter

IUCr Newsletter

EXPO&more International Workshop

Latest articles

Catalina Ruiz-Pérez (1957–2019)

Catalina Ruiz-Pérez (1957–2019)

Fourth International School on Aperiodic Crystals

Fourth International School on Aperiodic Crystals

Lab in a DAC – high-pressure crystallography as a powerful tool to study chemical interactions and chemical reactions

Lab in a DAC – high-pressure crystallography as a powerful tool to study chemical interactions and chemical reactions

References

A potential difference for single-particle cryo-EM

A potential difference for single-particle cryo-EM

References

Studies of enzyme systems rewarded with the Aminoff Prize

Studies of enzyme systems rewarded with the Aminoff Prize

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 awarded for development of lithium-ion batteries

Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2019 awarded for development of lithium-ion batteries

Cyrus Chothia (1942–2019)

Cyrus Chothia (1942–2019)

32nd European Crystallography Meeting

32nd European Crystallography Meeting

newsletter design: Michele Zema, Andrea Sharpe, Peter Strickland, Brian McMahon; newsletter logo design: Michele Zema