At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Hugh O'Neill, director of the Center for Structural Molecular Biology, studies biological materials using neutron beams to advance biofuel research. He utilizes the Biological Small-Angle Neutron Scattering instrument, the only DOE Office of Science tool dedicated to biological samples. O'Neill joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory nearly 15 years ago to study plant photosynthesis proteins and now focuses on plant material fermentation.
"My plant cell wall research focuses on a couple of key areas," O'Neill said, describing his work on extracting fuels from plants and studying cellulose synthesis for biofuels and bioproducts. Structural cellulose, the most abundant polymer, is a key target in these applications. O'Neill is investigating the role of intrinsically disordered proteins in cellulose formation, which may contribute to more efficient biofuel production. "Small-angle neutron scattering is well suited to studying the dynamic assemblies of these flexible, disordered proteins compared to other structural characterization methods," he said. He uses Biological Small-Angle Neutron Scattering along with computational simulations to model protein structure and function, as stated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Under O'Neill's leadership, Biological Small-Angle Neutron Scattering has been upgraded with robotic systems and custom software, increasing sample processing fourfold. The addition of three detectors allows a sample's full spatial scale to be captured in one measurement, supporting large-scale studies such as plant biomass pretreatment analysis and low-temperature material freezing research, according to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Originally from Ireland, O'Neill studied at University College Dublin, researching electron transfer in proteins before focusing on bacterial cell fermentation for his doctorate. He joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher in 1998 and became a staff scientist in 2005. O'Neill said, "Helping others be successful and learning from the projects themselves is very rewarding."
