Electron crystallography of crotoxin complex thin crystals
Crotoxin complex is a neurotoxin isolated from the venom of the South America rattlesnake, Crotalus durrissus terrificus. It consists of two dissimilar subunits, one very acidic and the other very basic. Both acidic and basic subunits are required to show its neurotoxicity. The toxin attacks novally on both the pre-synaptic and the post-synaptic sites of the neuro-muscular junction.This protein has been crystallized in thin platelet forms suitable for electron crystallographic studies and an electron diffraction pattern of a glucose embedded crotoxin complex crystal has been recorded to an atomic resolution. The space group of this thin crystal was determined to be P4222 by a combination of electron microscopic techniques. In each unit cell, there are 8 crotoxin complex molecules arranged in a 4 layer configuration along the c axis. Different crystals have been found to have different thicknesses. We have been able to determine whether the diffraction data is obtained from a crystal with a half or a full unit cell by calculating the crystallographic reliability factors from the digitized electron diffraction pattern and by measuring optical density of a low magnification image recorded immediately after each electron diffractign pattern.