BioCAT scientist Weikang Ma was awarded a five year $2 million grant from the NIH to study inherited cardiac conditions.

When it comes to keeping hearts pumping, Illinois Institute of Technology Research Assistant Professor and BioCAT scientist Weikang Ma continues to show that he is prepared to make a significant impact.

Ma has published a pair of papers—one in Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) and another in PNAS Nexus—and also received a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to further his research into inherited cardiac conditions since December 2023.

Both papers were published in February. The first, titled "Myosin in Autoinhibited Off State(s), Stabilized by Mavacamten, Can Be Recruited in Response to Inotropic Interventions," was published in PNAS by Ma, Illinois Tech Professor of Biology and Physics Thomas Irving, Henry Gong (Ph.D. BIOL ’22), and a team of scientists from Bristol Myers Squibb, Cardiac Consulting, the Institute for Information Technologies, and FilamenTech. The second, titled "The Structural Off and On States of Myosin Can Be Decoupled from the Biochemical Super- and Disordered-Relaxed States," was published in PNAS Nexus by Ma, Irving, and Gong, along with scientists from Johns Hopkins University …

BioCAT offered its third MuscleX workshop entitled “Sarcomeric regulation mechanisms in health and disease” from May 18 -19 2023. This entirely virtual workshop had 200 registered attendees.

BioCAT offered its third MuscleX workshop entitled “Sarcomeric regulation mechanisms in health and disease” from May 18 -19 2023. This entirely virtual workshop had 200 registered attendees. The workshop started with an introductory presentation of the scientific missions supported at BioCAT followed by a series of 13 scientific presentations highlighting recent muscle studies using x-ray diffraction and/or other structural techniques. Topical areas that were covered were 1) Thick filament-based regulation, 2) New insights into thin filament regulation, 3) Titin and muscle regulation, 4) MyBPC and regulation of thick and thin filament, and 5) Translational studies on structural bases of muscle diseases. Speakers came from several US states, the UK, Italy and Germany. Of the 13 speakers, eight of them were at an early career stage. Speakers included Thomas Irving (BioCAT, APS, USA), Weikang Ma (BioCAT, APS, USA), Yanhong Wang (King’s College London, UK), Ilaria Morotti (U Florence, Italy) , Saffie Mohran (University of Washington, USA),Neil Kad (University of Kent, UK), Davide Tamborrini (Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology, Germany), Anthony Hessel …

BioCAT held its ninth intensive HOW-TO course in BioSAXS from 2/28/22-3/3/23 with 32 remote participants. There were four days of lectures and hands-on software tutorials on the basics of BioSAXS data collection and processing from expert practitioners in the field. Participants could elect to mail in samples for data collection prior to the course, and roughly half of them sent research samples and were able to analyze their own data as part of the workshop.

Some of the participants and instructors at the Everything BioSAXS 9 Workshop.

BioCAT held its ninth BioSAXS training course from 2/28/22-3/3/23. There were 32 remote participants and 8 instructors. The workshop was held entirely online, via Zoom, for ~5 hours each day. Before the workshop started, participants were able to mail samples to BioCAT for SAXS data collection. This data was then sent to them, and they were able to analyze it as part of the workshop.

Day one started off with an excellent overview of the basic physics of SAXS and what kind of information you can obtain from the technique by Dr. Richard Gillilan (BioSAXS beamline, CHESS). This was followed by a talk from Dr …

BioCAT held its eight intensive HOW-TO course in BioSAXS from 6/21/22-6/24/22 with 36 remote participants. There were four days of lectures and hands-on software tutorials on the basics of BioSAXS data collection and processing from expert practitioners in the field. Participants could elect to mail in samples for data collection prior to the course, and roughly half of them sent research samples and were able to analyze their own data as part of the workshop.

Some of the participants and instructors at the Everything BioSAXS 8 Workshop.

BioCAT held its eighth BioSAXS training course from 6/21/22-6/24/22. There were 36 remote participants and 8 instructors. The workshop was held entirely online, via Zoom, for ~5 hours each day. Before the workshop started, participants were able to mail samples to BioCAT for SAXS data collection. This data was then sent to them, and they were able to analyze it as part of the workshop.

Day one started off with an excellent overview of the basic physics of SAXS and what kind of information you can obtain from the technique by Dr. Richard Gillilan (BioSAXS beamline, CHESS). This was followed by a talk from Dr …

To promote the use of two NIH P30 Centers that are National Resources for the study of striated muscle; the Biophysics Collaborative Access Team (BioCAT: funded by NIGMS) at Argonne National Laboratory and the Center for Translational Muscle Research (CTMR: funded by NIAMS) are offering Multiscale Structural and Functional Studies for Striated Muscle workshop following the Myofilament Meeting in Madison Wisconsin.

The goal of this workshop is to inform investigators about the resources and expertise that these two Centers can provide, and to discuss what other resources and services would be most useful. The workshop will take place on May 24th from 1:30 pm to 4 pm at Madison Monona Terrace. See the schedule below for details.

We are pleased to announce that Dr. Maxwell (Max) Watkins has recently joined BioCAT as a beamline scientist. Max got his B.S. degree in Biochemistry from Lehigh University, and his Ph.D in Chemistry from Princeton University. Much of his Ph.D. work was done at Cornell University after Prof. Nozomi Ando, his Ph.D. supervisor, moved her lab from Princeton to Cornell. His Ph.D. work involved extensive SAXS and cryo-EM studies of flexible systems. During his studies he has acquired a strong background in biochemistry and structural biology. He is extremely experienced in standard SAXS data collection and analysis techniques, including SEC-SAXS, and has used SAXS to study challenging light sensitive and anaerobic systems. Max is a great addition to the BioCAT team, and will eventually take over running most of the standard SAXS program at BioCAT. He will also be a regular participant in our SAXS coffee hours, so please drop by and say hi when you have the chance. You can find Max's contact info on our Contact page.

Max replaces Dr. Srinivas Chakravarthy, who left BioCAT for exciting new opportunities in industry in August 2021. We are deeply appreciative of all the work that …

Starting April 17, 2023 the APS will be down for a year to undergo a major upgrade, including rebuilding the accelerator and storage ring (“APS-U”). Following this upgrade, APS operations will restart in April 2024, though it may be several more months before all the beamlines are running again. Once completed, the new APS-U ring will provide about 100 times greater brightness than is currently available. This will provide both an increase in flux and a reduced focus size for the APS ID beamlines, including BioCAT.

BioCAT invites you to join us for a virtual town hall on March 15th to discuss the impact of APS-U on BioCAT and our user community. The purpose of this town hall is to provide an overview of the planned upgrade and its impact on, and benefits for, the BioCAT community. We also will present our plans to facilitate experiments for our users at other synchrotrons during the dark period. The town hall will consist of short presentations by BioCAT staff followed by an open-ended question and answer period. No registration is required.