Structurally Integrated Biology for Life Sciences (SIBYLS) beamline researchers, led by research scientist Michal Hammel of the Molecular Biophysics & Integrated Bioimaging (MBIB) Division, used X-ray scattering to define an unexpected key role for unfolded protein regions in DNA break repair to allow regulation plus access to DNA ends. The concept of DNA break repair as a flexibly-linked dynamic complex, as opposed to a linear pathway, suggests new approaches to targeting DNA repair for selectively killing cancer cells due to their high levels of DNA instability. Their findings were published in a recent cover article of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
The SIBYLS beamline of the Advanced Light Source at Berkeley Lab, directed by MBIB’s senior scientist John Tainer, is optimized for both small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and macromolecular crystallography (MX), making it unique among the world’s mostly SAXS or MX dedicated beamlines.
