The Structural Biology Center (SBC) operates a National User Facility for macromolecular crystallography. Located at Sector 19 of the Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, SBC provides the scientific community with two experimental beamlines: an insertion-device, 19-ID, and a bending-magnet, 19-BM. The beamlines are well suited to a wide range of crystallographic experiments including:

  • Crystals of macromolecular assemblies with very large unit cells
  • MAD/SAD phasing
  • Crystals of membrane proteins
  • Small, weakly diffracting crystals
  • Ultra-high resolution crystallography
  • Cryo-crystallography

The SBC mission is to advance and promote scientific and technological innovation in support of the DOE mission by providing world-class scientific research and advancing scientific knowledge:

  • SBC provides advanced data collection facilities at the APS to the national user community and maintains high-profile user programs
  • SBC exploits major advances in macromolecular x-ray crystallography and addresses the most challenging structural biology problems to advance scientific knowledge
  • SBC is an important component of integrated biosciences and contributes to the expansion of existing programs and exploration of new opportunities in structural biology, proteomics and genomics research with a major focus on medicine, bio-nanomachines, and biocatalysis that are highly relevant to energy resources, health, a clean environment and national security
Beamline Information

Structural Biology Center Brochure (2010)

The SBC offers two experiment stations: the insertion-device beamline, 19-ID, and the bending magnet beamline, 19-BM. Both beamlines are among the most powerful and focused X-ray sources available for structural biology.

Chemistry Nobel Prize (2009)

Argonne allows scientists to visualize extraordinarily complex combinations of macromolecules at the atomic level. These studies can not be done without synchrotron light sources and x-ray crystallography, and the Advanced Photon Source is one of just a few places in the world where this research can be done.

Beamline Tours

Want to Visit Us, in Person?

We love having people visit our beamlines. If you would like to tour our facilities in person, please contact Michelle Radford or tours@anl.gov and request a tour of SBC-CAT.

Student Training

SBC offers applications for remote faculty supervised training of students in remote data collection on 19BM beamline.  SBC can provide standard protein crystals (lysozyme, thaumatin) for data collection. SBC resources for data collection, processing and structure determination will be available. The SBC staff will assist in training. This training will help the next generation of synchrotron light source users and scientists learn software and strategies for data collection, data processing, and structure determination.  Please contact mficner@anl.gov for more information.