Newsletter 172
May 5, 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: April 2008 Publications by Members of the Group


1: Agniswamy J, Joyce MG, Hammer CH, Sun PD.
 Towards a rational approach for heavy-atom derivative 
screening in protein crystallography.
Acta Crystallogr D Biol Crystallogr. 2008 Apr;64:354-67.
PMID: 18391402
   
2: Suh JY, Cai M, Clore GM.
 Impact of phosphorylation on structure and thermodynamics of
the interactionbetween the N-terminal domain of enzyme I and 
the histidine phosphocarrier protein of the bacterial 
phosphotransferase system.
J Biol Chem. 2008 Apr 29. PMID: 18445588 
   
3: Poltoratsky V, Horton JK, Prasad R, Beard WA, Woodgate R, 
Wilson SH.
 Negligible impact of pol iota expression on the alkylation 
sensitivity of pol beta-deficient mouse fibroblast cells.
DNA Repair (Amst). 2008 Apr 21. PMID: 18434259 
   
4: Qasba PK, Boeggeman E, Ramakrishnan B.
 Site-Specific Linking of Biomolecules via Glycan Residues 
Using Glycosyltransferases.
Biotechnol Prog. 2008 Apr 22. PMID: 18426242
   
5: Liu L, Botos I, Wang Y, Leonard JN, Shiloach J, Segal DM, 
Davies DR.
 Structural basis of toll-like receptor 3 signaling with 
double-stranded RNA.
Science. 2008 Apr 18;320(5874):379-81. PMID: 18420935
   
6: Qasba PK, Ramakrishnan B, Boeggeman E.
 Structure and function of beta -1,4-galactosyltransferase.
Curr Drug Targets. 2008 Apr;9(4):292-309. PMID: 18393823

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).