Marc Allaire
Biophysicist Staff Scientist
Head, Berkeley Center for Structural Biology
Research Interests
Marc Allaire is a beamline scientist for Sector 5, which consists of Beamlines 5.0.1, 5.0.2, and 5.0.3, in the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology (BCSB) team at the Advanced Light Source (ALS). Allaire came to the ALS from Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he had been responsible for macromolecular crystallography (MX) beamlines and the biological small-angle x-ray scattering (SAXS) program.
Allaire has been using synchrotrons in his own biochemistry research since 1992, when he worked on the viral 3C protease at the Photon Factory in Japan. Early in his career he had to deal with the effects of radiation damage to samples and developed and proposed a new model to explain the loss of diffraction from x-ray exposure to protein crystals. Over the years he led the field in the structure determination of challenging projects, including membrane protein complexes.
The BCSB has a strong pharmaceutical user base, so he is involved heavily in structural biology for drug discovery. In addition to the sheer quantity of structures being solved, he enjoys the challenge of solving the growing range of structures and working on new ways to speed up the process. He has a lot of experience developing process improvements for protein crystallography, including the incorporation of robotics. Allaire participates in education and outreach by providing training sessions for users who want to access the robotics capabilities available at BCSB.
Recent Publications
Related News
Biosciences Area FY24 LDRD Projects
The projects of 21 Biosciences Area scientists and engineers received funding through the FY24 Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program.
Gemini Beamline Banks First Protein Structure
A protein structure obtained at Beamline 2.0.1 (“Gemini”) at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) has recently been published in the literature and deposited into the Protein Data Bank—two significant firsts for this beamline. The structure helped provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms involved in triggering certain inflammatory diseases. This milestone, which utilized Gemini’s capacity to target crystals smaller than 20 microns, was almost a decade in the making. Simon Morton, now a semi-retired staff scientist at ALS, and Corie Ralston, facility director at the Molecular Foundry and a staff scientist in the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Division (MBIB), helped bring the microfocus beamline to the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology (BCSB) in 2014. Beamline operations are now led by Marc Allaire, a biophysicist staff scientist in MBIB and head of the BCSB.Read More in the Berkeley Lab News Center.
Biosciences Area FY23 LDRD Projects
The projects of 22 Biosciences Area scientists and engineers received funding through the FY23 Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program.
