Newsletter 131
September 25, 2006

The NIH X-Ray Diffraction Interest Group

Newsletter web site: http://mcl1.ncifcrf.gov/nihxray

The 2006 International Conference on Structural Genomics Oct. 22-26, 2006, Beijing, China

Advances in Protein Crystallography 24 - 25 January 2007, South San Francisco, CA, USA

9th International Conference on Biology and Synchrotron Radiation 13-17 August 2007, Manchester, England

Item 1: August 2006 Publications by Members:

1:  Esser L, Gong X, Yang S, Yu L, Yu CA, Xia D. 
Surface-modulated motion switch: Capture and release of iron-sulfur protein in the cytochrome
bc1 complex.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2006 Aug 29;103(35):13045-50. PMID: 16924113
  
2:  Su HP, Lin DY, Garboczi DN. 
The structure of G4, the poxvirus disulfide oxidoreductase essential for virus maturation and
infectivity.
J Virol. 2006 Aug;80(15):7706-13. PMID: 16840349
  
3:  Shi D, Yu X, Roth L, Morizono H, Tuchman M, Allewell NM. 
Structures of N-acetylornithine transcarbamoylase from Xanthomonas campestris complexed
with substrates and substrate analogs imply mechanisms for substrate binding and catalysis.
Proteins. 2006 Aug 1;64(2):532-42. PMID: 16741992
  
4:  Inoue K, Borchers CH, Negishi M. 
Cohesin protein SMC1 represses the nuclear receptor CAR-mediated synergistic activation of
 human P450 gene by xenobiotics.
Biochem J. 2006 Aug 15;398(1):125-33. PMID: 16623664

Item 2: Tips and Tricks - Crystallization

Editorial - The Silver Bullets: At the ACA 2006, Bob Cudney (Hampton Research) and Alexander McPherson (University of California Irvine) presented an alternative stretage for crystallizing macromolecules, as they put it, by searching the silver bullets. Examples of the silver bullets incude hexammine cobalt (III) chloride, 1,3-propanediol, sebacic acid, 4-aminobezonic acid, terephthalic acid, arginine, pentaglycine, glycerol 2-phosphate, trans-aconitic acid, trimesic acid, and putrescine. As you may realize, they are in fact additives. They tested 120 additives in the crystallization experiment of 81 proteins using two fundamental conditions: (1) 30% w/v PEG 3350, 0.1 M HEPES pH 7.0; and (2) 50% Tacsimate^TM pH 7.0. The succesful rate was very impressive: 65 out of 81 (85%) proteins crystallized. Most significant was that 35 of the 65 (54%) crystallized only in the presence of one or more reagent mixes, but not in control samples lacking any additives!

Click for Introduction and tips and tricks in Crystallization, Post-crystallization treatments for improving diffraction quality of protein crystals, Derivatization, Diffraction, Symmetry, Structure Solution, Structure Refinement, and Structure Analysis.

Item 3: Topic Discussion - Low Resolution Crystallography

Byron DeLaBarre & Axel Brunger: Considerations for the refinement of low-resolution crystal structures

James Hurley (NIDDK): Low Resolution Crystallography in the Hurley Lab

Click for previous discussions on: PHASER, HKL2000, Parallel Protein Expression, Structural Genomics, NCS, Missing Atoms, Trends in Crystallography, and Absorption Correction.

2005)

Part 1: "How to read international tables?"

Part 2: "Data collection strategy" and "Twinning"

"Phasing methods - a general introduction to all methods"

Part 3: "SAD phasing, Quick halide soaking, and Radiation damage

with possible use of it for phasing"

This site is maintained by Dr. Xinhua Ji (jix@ncifcrf.gov) on the NCI-CCR-MCL server (http://mcl1.ncifcrf.gov).