Researchers highlight progress in crystallography

A multidisciplinary field aimed at the study of the atomic structure of materials and proteins through X-ray diffraction by crystals gains ground in Brazil with the construction of a new synchrotron source.

By Elton Alisson

Agência FAPESP – A group of 110 researchers from nine Latin American countries gathered September 22-24, 2014 at the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials (CNPEM) in Campinas for discussions regarding research on biological crystallography – a field aimed at the study of protein crystals to understand biological processes, discover how diseases emerge and progress, and develop new drugs.

These researchers took part in the Latin American Summit Meeting on Biological Crystallography and Complementary Methods, the largest Latin American scientific event of the year, to commemorate the International Year of Crystallography (IYCr2-14). The meeting was sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr).

“Crystallography is not well-established in Latin America, South Africa or Asia. That is why we organize scientific meetings in these three regions in an effort to stimulate the progress of studies in the field,” said Marvin Hackert, president of the IUCr and professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Texas, Austin, in comments to Agência FAPESP.

According to Hackert, Brazil was selected as the meeting site because it is where the most crystallography studies in all of Latin America are carried out.

It is estimated that in recent decades, the nearly 20 research groups in Brazil, concentrated at universities and research institutions in the state of São Paulo, have discovered the structures of approximately 400 macromolecules.

“Using crystallography, research groups in Brazil study proteins from parasites that are responsible for tropical diseases for the purpose of developing new drugs,” said Richard Garratt, professor of the São Carlos Institute of Physics (IFSC) at the University of São Paulo (USP).

“In recent years, however, the studies have become quite diversified. There are groups studying proteins from viruses, plants and bacteria for a variety of purposes,” said Garratt, one of the event coordinators.

From 1990 to 2013, Brazilians published nearly 14,400 studies related to crystallography, according to estimates by Glaucius Oliva, president of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and professor at IFSC-USP, during a lecture at the event. “The number of studies published in this field in Brazil is growing exponentially,” he said.

Among the reasons mentioned for the growth is the 1997 launch of the Brazilian Synchrotron Light Laboratory (LNLS) at CNPEM. This institution is the only one in Latin America that has a synchrotron light source, which provides intense electromagnetic radiation produced by an accelerated electron charge and deflected by a magnetic field in a particle accelerator (the synchrotron).

The equipment is used by researchers and companies to study the structure of material at the atomic level. According to Garratt, with the construction of Sirius, the new synchrotron source at the LNLS, Brazilian research in crystallography is poised to make great strides in terms of production and international impact.

“With Sirius, we have a way to engage in state-of-the-art crystallography research, and we will attract researchers from other parts of the world to conduct their measurements in Brazil. We’re also capable of facing more complex and challenging scientific problems that are of the utmost relevance,” he said.

The new synchrotron source, which takes its name from the brightest star visible from Earth, is expected to have a 3-GeV (gigaelectron-volt) power accelerator, a 518.2-meter circumference and the capacity to handle up to 40 beamlines (research stations).

“Sirius is expected to be one of the most advanced sources of synchrotron radiation in the world,” said André Ambrosio, a researcher at CNPEM’s Brazilian Biosciences National Laboratory (LNBio) and coordinator of the MX-1 beamlines of the LNLS, dedicated to X-ray diffraction by crystals. “We want to create a user community for Sirius through meetings like this.”

The year of crystallography

According to Hackert, UNESCO chose 2014 as the International Year of Crystallography to commemorate the 100 years since the birth of the field and to honor the pioneering work in the field by German physicist Max von Laue (1879-1960) and the British father and son William Henry Bragg (1862-1942) and William Laurence Bragg (1890-1971).

In 1914, Laue won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery that by striking a crystal with X-rays, the atoms uniformly distributed inside it caused the rays to disperse in specific directions.

One year later, in 1915, the Braggs shared the Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering that it is possible to produce a three-dimensional image of the atomic structure of a material by precisely measuring the direction and intensity of the X-ray beams that pass through the inside of a crystal.

These discoveries contributed to breaking open the field of knowledge that is considered to be essential in several scientific areas such as chemistry, physics, biology, medicine and materials science.

Despite its importance to science and to human life by allowing the study of the structure of materials at the atomic or molecular level and, from that knowledge, paving the way to the development of new drugs and more resistant materials , crystallography remains relatively unknown to the greater public, according to Hackert.

“When we talk to the non-science public about the tremendous discoveries made through crystallography over the course of the past 100 years, such as the structure of penicillin [by British chemist Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin], which allowed the synthesis and production of this natural antibiotic, they ask us what crystallography is,” he said.

“With the activities planned this year, we plan to contribute to increasing society’s general knowledge about the benefits and importance of crystallography,” he said.

Crystallography is also recognized as a field rich in Nobel prizes. It is estimated that the research of 45 prize winners in recent decades in the fields of physiology, biology, chemistry and physics is related to crystallography.

In 2009, Israeli chemist Ada Yonath shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry with colleagues Venkatraman Ramakrishnan and Thomas Steitz for identifying the structure of the ribosome and the way antibiotics work to interrupt ribosome function.

“Crystallography involves multidisciplinary problems. Therefore, it attracts researchers from a variety of fields such as chemistry and physics who try to work together to find answers to the problems we face,” said Yonath, who also attended the meeting in Campinas.