Newsletter 164
January 14, 2008

The NIH X-Ray Diffraction Interest Group

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

2008 Meeting of the American Crystallography Association
31 May - 5 June 2008, Knoxville, TN, USA

21st Congress of the International Union of Crystallography 2008
23 - 31 August 2008, Osaka, Japan

Item 1: December 2007 Publications by Members of the Group


1: Sucato CA, Upton TG, Kashemirov BA, Osuna J, Oertell K, 
Beard WA, Wilson SH, Florian J, Warshel A, McKenna CE, 
Goodman MF.
 DNA Polymerase beta Fidelity: Halomethylene-Modified Leaving 
Groups in Pre-Steady-State Kinetic Analysis Reveal Differences
at the Chemical Transition State.
Biochemistry. 2007 Dec 28; PMID: 18161950 
     
2: Schwieters CD, Clore GM.
 A Pseudopotential for Improving the Packing of Ellipsoidal 
Protein Structures Determined from NMR Data.
J Phys Chem B. 2007 Dec 19; PMID: 18088109
    
3: Wang J, Dauter M, Alkire R, Joachimiak A, Dauter Z.
 Triclinic lysozyme at 0.65 A resolution.
Acta Crystallogr D Biol Crystallogr. 2007 Dec;63(Pt 12):1254-68. 
Epub 2007 Nov 16. PMID: 18084073

Item 2: Tips and Tricks

Click for Introduction and tips and tricks in Pre-crystallization modification, Crystallization, Post-crystallization treatment, Derivatization, Diffraction, Symmetry, Structure Solution, Structure Refinement, and Structure Analysis & Presentation.

Recommended viewing: How long will my crystal last?

Dr. Susan Buchanan (NIDDK): Crystallization of Integral Membrane Proteins
X-ray crystallography has become a very powerful tool for determining the structures of integral membrane proteins, with almost 200 unique membrane protein structures solved as of December 2007 (for a complete list, see Stephen White’s summary at http://blanco.biomol.uci.edu/Membrane_Proteins_xtal.html). However, membrane protein structures still represent less than 1% of all structures in the PDB. The major bottlenecks in the field are the expression of sufficient quantities of functional membrane proteins and the growth of well ordered crystals for X-ray analysis. This short review covers only aspects pertaining to crystallization. Our approach to membrane protein crystallization was recently written up for Current Protocols in Protein Science (Unit 17.9, available from the NIH library website). An interesting review has been written by Patrick Loll¹. (Full Article)

Item 3: Topic Discussion

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

Item 4: Dr. Zbigniew Dauter's Lectures at the NIH (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).