X-ray Facility

The facility is located at L141 of the main campus, 3333 Green Bay Road, North Chicago, IL 60064. It supports structural biology projects that utilize X-ray crystallography and molecular modeling. Core instrumentation for crystallization consists of the robot Mosquito from TPP Labtech, and the Korima UV fluorescence visualization system. In-house diffraction experiments are performed on an R-axis area detector or a Bruker CCD detector, using the high-brilliance Rigaku generator, a rotating copper anode, and Oxford mirrors. Cryogenic cooling is provided by the Rigaku X-stream or the Oxford Cryosystem. Synchrotron diffraction data is collected at APS Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. Rosalind Franklin University is a member of SER-CAT (www.ser.aps.anl.gov) with regular access to APS beamlines 22ID and 22BM. Computing is based on a 6TB Linux server and several NFS-connected client computers with 3D graphics.  Multiple software suites are kept up to date by Structural Biology Grid (www.sbgrid.org). Modeling packages include Molecular Operating Environment (www.chemcomp.com) and SCHRODINGER (www.schrodinger.com).