Newsletter 171
April 21, 2008

The NIH X-Ray Diffraction Interest Group

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

38th Mid-Atlantic Macromolecular Crystallography Meeting
22 - 24 May 2008, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

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: March 2008 Publications by Members of the Group

1: Nowotny M, Cerritelli SM, Ghirlando R, Gaidamakov SA, 
Crouch RJ, Yang W.
 Specific recognition of RNA/DNA hybrid and enhancement of human
RNase H1 activity by HBD.
EMBO J. 2008 Mar 13; PMID: 18337749 
   
2: Tang C, Ghirlando R, Clore GM.
 Visualization of transient ultra-weak protein self-association
in solution using paramagnetic relaxation enhancement.
J Am Chem Soc. 2008 Mar 26;130(12):4048-56. PMID: 18314985
   
3: Sun P, Tropea JE, Austin BP, Cherry S, Waugh DS.
 Structural characterization of the Yersinia pestis type III 
secretion system needle protein YscF in complex with its 
heterodimeric chaperone YscE/YscG.
J Mol Biol. 2008 Mar 28;377(3):819-30. PMID: 18281060

Item 2: Tips and Tricks

David Garboczi (NIAID): Our Experiences with the Data Reduction Program XDS
Let me tell you about our experiences with the data reduction program XDS as an alternative to the more widely used software packages. It is run by a script that is detector-specific and there are examples on Wolfgang Kabsch's web site. We find it to be flexible and easy to use, which allows more experimenting with the raw X-ray data to achieve the best datasets. (Full Article)

Need an image processing software that builds three-dimensional profiles? Try XDS. For an easy start, see INTEGRATE by Kay Diederichs.

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.

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).