1. KEY DOMAIN IN HIV-1 GENE SHOWS UNEXPECTED FLEXIBILITY
by Lori Tamura
(Contact: srholbrook@lbl.gov)

One of the most promising strategies for treating infection by human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) is to interfere with the replication of the virus at the genetic level. To this end, researchers from Berkeley Lab's Physical Biosciences Division, using the Macromolecular Crystallography Facility (a component of the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology), have analyzed the structure of a portion of the HIV-1 gene (the Rev binding element, or RBE) that plays a key role in the virus's life cycle. The high-resolution (2.1-angstrom) structure obtained at the ALS facility indicates a greater degree of flexibility in the RBE than previously thought. Such details about the molecular structure of HIV-1 will help facilitate the design of drugs capable of throwing a metaphorical wrench into the virus's genetic machinery.

Read the full story at http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/science/sci_archive/hiv.html.

Publication about this research: L.W. Hung, E.L. Holbrook, S.R. Holbrook, "The crystal structure of the Rev binding element of HIV-1 reveals novel base pairing and conformational variability," Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 97(10), 5107 (2000).

2. NEW DIRECTOR OF DOE OFFICE OF SCIENCE TOURS ALS

Mildred Dresselhaus, who was recently sworn in as Director of the Office of Science at the U.S. Department of Energy, toured the ALS last week as part of an annual on-site review of Laboratory programs. The Office of Science, with an annual budget of $2.8 billion, is one of the largest sponsors of basic research in the federal government and provides support for ALS operation through its Office of Basic Energy Sciences. Last week's visit was the new director's first official appearance in Berkeley.

After a morning of presentations by various Berkeley Lab managers and scientists, Dresselhaus lunched in the ALS mezzanine conference room with several ALS users. Later, she was treated to a few poster presentations on the ALS floor. At Beamline 8.0.1, Lou Terminello (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory) talked about the characterization of low-dimensional materials using soft x rays, and Z.Q. Qiu (Univ. of California, Berkeley) presented his group's work on quantum well states in magnetic nanostructures. At Beamline 6.1.2, David Attwood (Center for X-Ray Optics, Berkeley Lab) discussed the ALS's role in developing extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography as a technique for manufacturing the next generation of computer chips. Finally, at Beamline 5.0.2, Thomas Earnest, Mhairi Donohoe, and Li-Wei Hung (Physical Biosciences Division, Berkeley Lab) talked about recent successes in protein crystallography research before the tour group left the ALS to observe Berkeley Lab's crystallization robot with Derek Yegian (Engineering Division, Berkeley Lab).

3. LAST CALL: MCF PROPOSALS DUE NOVEMBER 1
(Contact: alsproposals@lbl.gov)

November 1, 2000, is the deadline for independent investigators to submit proposals to the User Services Office for conducting research at the Macromolecular Crystallography Facility (Beamline 5.0.2). This is the third and final notice for the April-December 2001 running period. Scientists wishing to renew a previous proposal must notify the ALS User Services Office Manager, Bernie Dixon, at alsproposals@lbl.gov. The following resources are available for further information:

ALS User Services Administrator

alsuser@lbl.gov

Independent-investigator process

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/independinvest.html

Beamline 5.0.2 information

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/5.0-Datasheet.pdf

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/bl5.0.2.html

Macromolecular Crystallography Facility Web site

http://www.lbl.gov/LBL-Programs/mcf

4. FIRST CALL: PHYSICAL SCIENCES PROPOSALS DUE DECEMBER 1
(Contact: alsproposals@lbl.gov)

The User Services Office is now accepting proposals from scientists who wish to conduct research as independent investigators in the physical sciences during the running period from June to November 2001. The deadline for submissions is December 1, 2000. (This information does not apply to protein crystallography proposals, which have a separate process and schedule; see item 3 above.) Scientists wishing to renew a previous proposal must fill in a one-page Experiment Report/Beamtime Request and submit it to the User Services Office by the December 1 deadline. The numeric rating for each proposal will be communicated to the investigator along with comments from the proposal study panel. The cutoff rating for each beamline in the previous proposal cycle is published on the Web (see below). The following resources are available for further information:

ALS User Services Administrator

alsuser@lbl.gov

Independent-investigator process

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/independinvest.html

Beamline information

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/datasheets.html

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/als_users_bl/bl_table.html

Proposal Study Panel (PSP) scores

http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/quickguide/pspscores.html

5. UEC CORNER: NOTES FROM THE USERS' EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE
by Nora Berrah
(Contact: berrah@wmich.edu)

By the time this issue of ALSNews is published, we will be wrapping up the 2000 ALS Users' Meeting. As of this writing, there are about 238 registrations and 75 abstracts for poster sessions. Please check our Web site (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/usermtg) for the schedule of events. This year, those selected to present "Highlights from Young Researchers" were the following: Xingjiang Zhou, Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory ("Electronic Structure of the Stripe Phase and High-Temperature Superconductors"); Christoph Bostedt, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/Univ. of Hamburg ("Electronic Structure of Ge-Nanocluster Films Probed with Synchrotron Radiation"); Ted Raab, Univ. of Colorado, Mountain Research Station ("Notes from the Underground: Synchrotron IR Microscopy and Plant-Microbe Interactions"); Cynthia Morin, McMaster Univ. ("X-Ray Spectromicroscopy Studies of Protein-Polymer Interactions"); Simon Morton, Univ. of Missouri-Rolla ("Spin-Polarized Photoemission Studies of Magnetite Films: Observation of Half-Metallic Effects in Real Samples"); and Jinghua Guo, Uppsala Univ., Sweden ("Soft-X-Ray Spectroscopic Study of Hydrogen Bonding and Solvent-Ligand Exchange in Fe3+ Water Solutions"). The winner of the poster competition was selected on Monday, October 16, 2000, and will be announced in the next issue of ALSNews.

I would like also to remind you to please respond to the annual call for End-of-Run Summaries. The Summary is a satisfaction questionnaire and can be found at http://alsusweb.lbl.gov. All users who had beamtime in FY 2000 should have received an email requesting that they fill out the Summary. The questionnaire was put together jointly by representatives from synchrotron user facilities and the Department of Energy. All the user facilities are now using a similar form.

6. ERRATUM

In the last issue of ALSNews, The Dow Chemical Company was inadvertently omitted from the funding credits for Beamline 5.3.2, which achieved first light on September 26. ALSNews apologizes for this oversight.

7. WHO'S IN TOWN: A SAMPLING OF ALS USERS

Following are some of the experimenters who will be collecting data during the next two weeks at the ALS.

Beamline 1.4.3
Phil Huie (Stanford Univ. Medical Center)
Hoi-Ying Holman (Berkeley Lab)
Sherry Zhang and Phil Ross (Berkeley Lab)
Harvey Doner (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
T.J. Wilkinson and Dale Perry (Berkeley Lab)
Wendy Panero and Raymond Jeanloz (Univ. of California, Berkeley)

Beamline 7.3.3
Alain Manceau (Univ. of Grenoble)

Beamline 8.0.1
Paul Alivisatos (Univ. of California, Berkeley)
Wayne Stolte (Berkeley Lab)

Beamline 9.3.2
David Shuh (Berkeley Lab)
Glenn Waychunas (Berkeley Lab)

8. OPERATIONS UPDATE
(Contact: Lampo@lbl.gov)

Beam availability and reliability percentages for the last two user runs are unavailable at this time. The data will be included in the next issue of ALSNews.

Long-term and weekly operations schedules are available on the Web (http://www-als.lbl.gov/als/accelinfo.html). Requests for special operations use of the "scrubbing" shift should be sent to Bruce Samuelson (BCSamuelson@lbl.gov, x4738) by 1:00 p.m. Friday. The Accelerator Status Hotline at (510) 486-6766 (ext. 6766 from Lab phones) features a recorded message giving up-to-date information on the operational status of the accelerator.