Canadian Light Source

Every day, our bodies work quietly to protect us, repairing small damage to our DNA that naturally happens over time. When this repair process doesn’t work as well as it should, it can affect how cells function and, over time, contribute to .

Researchers Marie-France Langelier and Marguerite Cusson from the Pascal laboratory at the Université de Montréal Département de biochimie - Faculté de médecine - Université de Montréal are studying how this repair system works, focusing on special proteins called PARPs that help detect and fix damage. DNA is the body’s instruction guide, and these proteins act as part of a careful maintenance team that keeps everything running smoothly.

Using our CMCF beamline, their research reveals how these proteins operate in detail. This work is important because it can support the development of more precise and effective , especially for conditions like where DNA repair is involved, helping improve care in a more thoughtful and less invasive way over time.

Image 1: PhD student Marguerite Cusson
Image 2: Research Scientist Marie-France Langelier

The demand for is growing quickly as people look for ways to prevent diet-related diseases. However, many foods lose important nutrients during digestion, preventing our bodies from getting the full benefit.

Dr. Kontogiorgos, from the UBC Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia, is developing new types of foods that protect as they pass through the stomach and deliver them directly to the gut, where the body absorbs them best. These foods are created using natural ingredients and are carefully studied to understand how they behave during processing and digestion.

With rising demand for functional foods and ingredients, this research opens new opportunities for innovation, helping companies create products that make it easier for people to get the nutrition they need every day.

Photo: Dr. Vassilis Kontogiorgos, left, and doctorate student Charles Li, right, at the BXDS-WLE beamline.

Congratulations to our CLS staff who convocated this week: Chelsea-Lea Randall (MSc in Physics and Engineering Physics), Linda Vogt (PhD in Geology), and Peter Ufondu (PhD in Physics and Engineering Physics and a Graduate Professional Skills Certificate). We’re proud of you!🎓🎉

Thank you to the participants of the 2026 CLS Macromolecular Crystallography (MX) Data Collection School! The school is designed to guide participants through the full experimental pipeline, from sample preparation and data collection at a synchrotron beamline to data processing, with close support from experienced mentors.

We were pleased to welcome attendees from the University of British Columbia, Queen's University, University of Toronto, McMaster University, Université de Montréal, Simon Fraser University, University of Calgary, University of Regina, and University of Saskatchewan.

It’s ! 🌎
Scientists from across Canada and around the world are using our bright synchrotron light to tackle environmental challenges. From studying how discarded face masks harm aquatic ecosystems, to finding more efficient ways to convert CO₂ into useful products, to studying how microplastics affect earthworms—this research is helping us better protect our planet.

Explore these projects and more: https://bit.ly/3OkBed1

In the past when companies that build airplanes, spacecraft, or cars wanted to update the design of a specific part, they’d have to create a new die or mold for casting that specific component -- a process that’s expensive and could take days if not weeks. And if the part didn’t fit quite right, they’d have to continue making new dies until they got the issue sorted out.

Now the and industries are using for this iterative R & D process, which is called rapid prototyping. One of the techniques is called laser powder bed fusion: a thin layer of ultrafine powder is spread on a plate, then a powerful laser traces the shape of the steel part at that layer, melting and fusing together the powder particles. These steps are repeated over and over again, layer upon layer, until the part is complete. If each layer is 100 microns thick, a single part might contain tens of thousands of layers.

This new method is faster and costs far less than traditional die casting. A major downside though is that the rapid heating and solidifying process can “build in” invisible defects -- called residual stress -- which could affect the mechanical properties of a part and ultimately cause it to fail. People working in the industry are aware of the issue and can adjust their “printer settings” accordingly, but it’s not well understood where specifically these defects occur.

Researchers from the University of Toronto / University of Toronto Engineering (Dept of Materials Science and Engineering) used the CLS to peer inside samples of 3D printed steel to learn more about where these defects occur. The distribution is not uniform, so some areas in an object have more residual stress than others.

Using ultrabright synchrotron light enabled them to localize the residual stress with precision down to about 2 microns – without having to cut into the steel. For reference, a human hair is between 50 and 70 microns in diameter.

“We were able to make a map of the residual stress,” says Tianyi Lyu, who conducted the study as part of his PhD under Professor Yu Zou, Canada Research Chair in Materials and Manufacturing for Extreme Environments. He believes they were pioneers in using a classic X-ray technique – called Laue diffraction -- to study residual stress in metal 3D printing.

The team’s top finding is that most residual stress is located at the edges of where the laser makes its pass while melting the steel powder; the most defects tend to occur at spots along the edges, sandwiched between two laser paths.

“This means we should not be using the same pass on each layer because this is causing an accumulation of residual stress,” says Lyu. “Rather, when doing the printing, we should change the process parameters (settings) such as for each layer to minimize this build up of stress.”

Lyu says that based on what they’ve learned, they now want to explore whether they can identify the optimal printer settings to make the distribution of defects more uniform. “This would be a big if, but if we can control where the residual stress occurs can we take advantage of that? If we have residual stress with a specific distribution, could it enhance the mechanical properties of a material instead of making it weaker?”

That breakthrough could eventually lead to stronger, safer components for spacecraft, airplanes, and cars.
https://bit.ly/49CggB8

Processed waste material from mining, called , can contain both useful metals (like copper, nickel, and zinc) and harmful ones (like arsenic, cadmium, and lead). Over time, natural weathering processes driven by rain and air can change how these elements move and spread. Researchers from the University of Saskatchewan / College of Arts and Science - University of Saskatchewan (Geological Sciences) are studying mine tailings on a site near Hanson Lake in northern Saskatchewan. Matt Lindsay and his team are using the CLS to determine where these elements are in the waste and how they are attached to minerals, especially iron and sulfur.

What they’re learning is important because it helps scientists predict when dangerous metals might move into water and harm people and wildlife. It can also help find ways to safely clean up old mine sites. At the same time, the research may help recover valuable metals from this waste, turning a problem into an economic opportunity. This could create jobs, reduce pollution, and support cleaner energy technologies.


Image 1: Legacy tailings near Hanson Lake in northern Saskatchewan.

Image 2: From left to right, members of the research team Ardalan Hayatifar (Postdoc), Petra Squirra (MSc student), Chris Chan (BSc student @ URegina), and Sanaz Hasani (PhD student).

You’ve likely seen social posts about the potentially deadly that 16th century women wore to look younger and more attractive. Researchers from McMaster University are using the CLS to answer some long-standing questions about the health risks posed by these historic formulations.

For example, did the vinegar in the Venetian ceruse that Queen Elizabeth I was thought to wear interact with the white lead in the recipe to make it more harmful? Initial research by Fiona McNeill and her team a years ago suggested that the did in fact move into the skin.

McNeill is back at the CLS, this time doing follow-up experiments to better understand the dynamics of how lead moves into the skin – specifically how much is going in and how quickly.

The team is applying different makeup formulations to skin from a pig, which McNeill says is similar to human skin -- “disturbingly so” says McNeill, with a chuckle. Then they’re X-ray imaging across ultrathin slices of the treated skin samples, to see what’s happening way down at the cellular level.

The expression “putting lipstick on a pig” is not all that far off the mark: “I have occasionally thought we could put that tagline on our program – we’re putting makeup on a pig”

McNeill and her team are studying a couple of different makeup formulations: The makeup Queen Elizabeth I was thought to wear, and a formulation called Laird’s Bloom of Youth, which combined white lead and glycerol. The Laird’s recipe was known to have killed women in the 18th century. But no one really knew for certain why.

“As a scientist, I looked at that and said to myself “That doesn’t make sense. Yeah, lead is dangerous but how did it get in (to the body)?

Fiona McNeill says the approach they’re using to answer these questions is only possible using a synchrotron. “Before, people always said inorganic lead doesn’t absorb through the skin, or that some forms (of lead) get absorbed a little but they go through very slowly,” she says. “What we’ve seen through this research is that that’s not true. It (lead) actually goes in much more than people had thought and it goes in much more quickly than people had thought. We think we have solved the mystery of the Laird's Bloom of Youth poisonings through the work we’ve done here at the CLS.”

Their findings, she says, have some modern-day implications. “Some of the protections we have in place about working with lead and using lead may not be appropriate because they are based on the idea that lead cannot be absorbed through the skin.”


Image 1: A researcher holding a specialty slide with thin slices of pigskin which were exposed to a historical cosmetic.

Image 2: From left to right, Shaelyn Horvath, Physics research technician; Christy Lee, BSc. Student in Chemical Biology; and, Maryam Nasir, PhD student in Medical Physic, setting up a sample for imaging at the beamline.

Image 3: The research team, from left to right: Maryam Nasir, PhD student in Medical Physics;
Christy Lee, BSc. Student in Chemical Biology; Shaelyn Horvath, Physics research technician;
Fiona McNeill, Professor Emeritus, Physics and Astronomy; and, Ibi Bondici, Beamline scientist, BioXAS.