Biography
I am deeply passionate about structural biology and have over a decade of laboratory experience working with proteins. I love working in an open and collaborative environment and have developed excellent communication skills by working in multidisciplinary teams throughout my career. I want to use my experience and skills to drive forward research that impacts human health and well-being.
Emma Beale is currently working as a Biochemistry Specialist in the Alvra group at SwissFEL. She supports all experiments carried out at the Alvra endstation, but her primary interest and expertise lie in the field of serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX). Within this, her main focus is to support users with sample preparation and their chosen sample delivery methods. Emma is also involved in supporting SFX experiments at the Cristallina endstation and in the development of new sample delivery systems at SwissFEL.
Emma gained a First Class BSc (Hons) degree in Biochemistry at the University of Otago, New Zealand and then completed her DPhil in Structural Biology at the University of Oxford, U.K.. Her thesis 'Mechanisms of immunoglobulin deactivation by Streptococcus pyogenes' was carried out under the supervision of Prof. Nicole Zitzmann and Prof. Max Crispin.
Emma then continued into a post-doctoral research position at Diamond Light Source, U.K. on the new microfocus macromolecular crystallography beamline VMXm. She was then employed as a post-doctoral researcher within the SwissFEL Alvra group supported by the PSI Career Return Program. From here, she took the opportunity to stay on at SwissFEL in her current position.
Peer reviewed publications
Cellini, A., Shankar, M.K., Nimmrich, A., Hunt, L.A., Monrroy, L., Mutisya, J., Furrer, A., Beale, E.V., Carrillo, M., Malla, T.N., Maj, P., Vrhovac, L., Dworkowski F., Cirelli, C., Johnson, P.J.M., Ozerov, D., Stojković, E.A., Hammarström, L., Bacellar, C., Standfuss, J., Maj, M., Schmidt, M., Weinert, T., Ihalainen, J.A., Wahlgren, W.Y., Westenhoff, S. Directed ultrafast conformational changes accompany electron transfer in a photolyase as resolved by serial crystallography. Nature Chemistry (2024) doi: 10.1038/s41557-023-01413-9
Banerjee, A., Jay, R.M., Leitner, T., Wang, R., Harich, J., Stefanuik, R., Coates, M.R., Beale, E.V., Kabanova, V., Kahraman, A., Wach, A., Ozerov, D., Arrell C., Milne, C., Johnson, P.J.M., Cirelli, C., Bacellar, C., Huse, N., Odelius, M., Wernet, P. Accessing metal-specific orbital interactions in C–H activation with resonant inelastic X-ray scattering. Chemical Science (2024) doi: 10.1039/D3SC04388F
Wranik, M., Kepa, M.W., Beale, E.V., James, D., Bertrand, Q., Weinert, T., Furrer, A., Glover, H., Gashi, D., Carrillo, M., Kondo, Y., Stipp, R.T., Khusainov, G., Nass, K., Ozerov, D., Cirelli, C., Johnson, P.J.M., Dworkowski, F., Beale, J.H., Stubbs, S., Zamofing, T., Schneider, M., Krauskopf, K., Gao, Li., Thorn-Seshold, O., Bostedt, C., Bacellar, C., Steinmetz, M.O., Milne, C., Standfuss, J. A multi-reservoir extruder for time-resolved serial protein crystallography and compound screening at X-ray free-electron lasers. Nature Communications (2023) doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-43523-5
Maestre-Reyna, M.,Wang, P., Nango, E., Hosokawa, Y., Saft, M., Furrer, A., Yang, C., Putu, E., Wu, W., Emmerich, H., Caramello, N., Franz-Badur, S., Yang, C., Engilberge, S., Wranik, M., Glover, H., Weinert, T., Wu, H., Lee, C., Huang, W., Huang, K., Chang, Y., Liao, J., Weng, J., Gad, W., Chang, C., Pang, A., Yang, K., Lin, W., Chang, Y., Gashi, D., Beale, E. V., Ozerov, D., Nass, K., Knopp, G., Johnson, P.J.M., Cirelli, C., Milne, C., Bacellar, C., Sugahara, M., Owada, S., Joti, Y., Yamashita, A., Tanaka, R., Tanaka, T., Luo, F., Tono, K., Zarzycka, W., Müller, P., Alahmad, M., Bezold, F., Fuchs, V., Gnau, P., Kiontke, S., Korf, L., Reithofer, V., Rosner, C., Seiler, E., Watad, M., Werel, L., Spadaccini, R., Yamamoto, J., Iwata, S., Zhong, D., Standfuss, J., Royant, A., Bessho, Y., Essen, L., Tsai, M. Visualizing the DNA repair process by a photolyase at atomic resolution. Science (2023) doi: 10.1126/SCIENCE.ADD7795
Christou, N., Apostolopoulou, V., Melo, D., Ruppert, M., Fadini, A., Henkel, A., Sprenger, J., Oberthuer, D., Günther, S., Pateras, A., Mashhour, A., Yefanov, O., Galchenkova, M., Reinke, P., Kremling, V., Scheer, T., Lange, E., Middendorf, P., Schubert, R., De Zitter, E., Lumbao-Conradson, K., Herrmann, J., Rahighi, S., Kunavar, A., Beale, E.V., Beale, J. H., Cirelli, C., Johnson, P.J.M., Dworkowski, F., Ozerov, D., Bertrand, Q., Wranik, M., Bacellar, C., Bajt, S., Wakatsuki, S. , Sellberg, J. , Huse, N., Turk, D., Chapman, H., Lane, T. Time-resolved crystallography captures light-driven DNA repair. Science (2023) doi: 10.1126/science.adj4270
Cellini, A., Shankar, M. K., Yuan Wahlgren, W., Nimmrich, A., Furrer, A., James D., Wranik, M., Aumonier, S., Beale, E. V., Dworkowski, F., Standfuss, J., Weinert, T., Westenhoff, S. Structural basis of the radical pair state in photolyases and cryptochromes. Chemical Communications (2022) doi: 10.1039/D2CC00376G.
Crawshaw, A. D., Beale, E. V., Warren, A. J., Stallwood, A., Duller, G., Trincao, J., Evans, G. A Sample Preparation Pipeline for Microcrystals at the VMXm Beamline. Journal of Visualized Experiments (2021) doi: 10.3791/62306.
Beale, E. V., Waterman, D. G., Hecksel, C., van Rooyen, J., Gilchrist, J. B., Parkhurst, J. M., de Hass, F., Buijsse, B., Evans, G., Zhang, P. A Workflow for Protein Structure Determination from Thin Crystal Lamella by Micro-Electron Diffraction. Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences (2020) doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2020.00179.
Beale, E. V., Warren, A. J., Trincaõ, J., Beilsten-Edmands, J., Crawshaw, A. D., Sutton, G., Stuart, D. & Evans, G. Scanning electron microscopy as a method for sample visualization in protein X-ray crystallography. IUCrJ (2020) doi.org/10.1107/S2052252520003875.
Beale, H. J., Bolton, R., Marshall, S. A., Beale, E. V., Carr, S. B., Ebrahim, A., Moreno-Chicano, T., Hough, M. A., Worrall, J. A. R., Tews, I., Owen, R. I. Successful sample preparation for serial crystallography experiments. Journal of Applied Crystallography (2019) doi: 10.1107/S1600576719013517.
Duyvesteyn, H. M. E., Kotecha, A., Ginn, H. M., Hecksel, C. W., Beale, E. V., de Haas, F., Evans, G., Zhang, P., Chiu, W., Stuart, D. I. Machining protein microcrystals for structure determination by electron diffraction. PNAS (2018) doi: 10.1073/pnas.1809978115.
Warren, A., Evans, G., Trincao, J., Beale, E., Crawshaw, A., Duller, G., Stallwood, A., Lunnon, M., Butler, D. VMXm: a new micro/nanofocus protein crystallography beamline at Diamond. Acta Cryst. A (2018) doi: 10.1107/S2053273318095086.
Vasiljevic, S., Beale, E. V., Bonomelli, C., Easthope, I. S., Pritchard, L. K., Seabright, G. E., Caputo, A. T., Scanlan, C. N., Dalziel, M., Crispin, M. Redirecting adenoviruses to tumour cells using therapeutic antibodies: Generation of a versatile human bispecific adaptor. Molecular Immunology (2015) doi:10.1016/j.molimm.2015.08.014.
Dixon, E. V., Claridge, J. K., Harvey, D. J., Baruah, K., Yu, X., Vesiljevic, S., Mattick, S., Pritchard, L. K., Krishna, B., Scanlan, C. N., Schnell, J. R., Higgins, M. K., Zitzmann, N., Crispin, M. Fragments of Bacterial Endoglycosidase S and Immunoglobulin G Reveal Subdomains of each that Contribute to Deglycosylation. Journal of Biological Chemistry (2014) doi:10.1074/jbc.M113.532812.