scholarly journals Nanovolume optimization of protein crystal growth using the microcapillary protein crystallization system

2010 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 1078-1083 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cory J. Gerdts ◽  
Glenn L. Stahl ◽  
Alberto Napuli ◽  
Bart Staker ◽  
Jan Abendroth ◽  
...  

The Microcapillary Protein Crystallization System (MPCS) is a microfluidic, plug-based crystallization technology that generates X-ray diffraction-ready protein crystals in nanolitre volumes. In this study, 28 out of 29 (93%) proteins crystallized by traditional vapor diffusion experiments were successfully crystallized by chemical gradient optimization experiments using the MPCS technology. In total, 90 out of 120 (75%) protein/precipitant combinations leading to initial crystal hits from vapor diffusion experiments were successfully crystallized using MPCS technology. Many of the resulting crystals produced high-quality X-ray diffraction data, and six novel protein structures that were derived from crystals harvested from MPCS CrystalCards are reported.

2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (7) ◽  
pp. 606-620 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jouko J. Virtanen ◽  
Yang Zhang

Molecular replacement (MR) has commonly been employed to derive the phase information in protein crystal X-ray diffraction, but its success rate decreases rapidly when the search model is dissimilar to the target. MR-REX has been developed to perform an MR search by replica-exchange Monte Carlo simulations, which enables cooperative rotation and translation searches and simultaneous clash and occupancy optimization. MR-REX was tested on a set of 1303 protein structures of different accuracies and successfully placed 699 structures at positions that have an r.m.s.d. of below 2 Å to the target position, which is 10% higher than was obtained by Phaser. However, cases studies show that many of the models for which Phaser failed and MR-REX succeeded can be solved by Phaser by pruning them and using nondefault parameters. The factors effecting success and the parts of the methodology which lead to success are studied. The results demonstrate a new avenue for molecular replacement which outperforms (and has results that are complementary to) the state-of-the-art MR methods, in particular for distantly homologous proteins.


Author(s):  
Julian C.-H. Chen ◽  
Zoë Fisher ◽  
Andrey Y. Kovalevsky ◽  
Marat Mustyakimov ◽  
B. Leif Hanson ◽  
...  

The room-temperature (RT) X-ray structure of H/D-exchanged crambin is reported at 0.85 Å resolution. As one of the very few proteins refined with anisotropic atomic displacement parameters at two temperatures, the dynamics of atoms in the RT and 100 K structures are compared. Neutron diffraction data from an H/D-exchanged crambin crystal collected at the Protein Crystallography Station (PCS) showed diffraction beyond 1.1 Å resolution. This is the highest resolution neutron diffraction reported to date for a protein crystal and will reveal important details of the anisotropic motions of H and D atoms in protein structures.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 3917-3922 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriela Gil-Alvaradejo ◽  
Rayana R. Ruiz-Arellano ◽  
Christopher Owen ◽  
Adela Rodríguez-Romero ◽  
Enrique Rudiño-Piñera ◽  
...  

2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (a1) ◽  
pp. C613-C613
Author(s):  
Jan Stránský ◽  
Tomáš Kovaľ ◽  
Lars Østergaard ◽  
Jarmila Dušková ◽  
Tereza Skálová ◽  
...  

Development of X-ray diffraction technologies have made de novo phasing of protein structures by single-wavelength anomalous dispersion by sulphur (S-SAD) more common. As anomalous differences in the sulphur atomic factors are in the order of errors of measurement, careful intensity reading and data processing are crucial. S-SAD was used for de novo phasing of a small 12 kDa protein with 4 sulphur atoms per molecule at 2.3 Å, where the data did not enable a straightforward structure solution. Data processing was performed using XDS [1] and scaling using XSCALE. The sulphur substructure was determined by SHELXD [2] and phases were obtained from SHELXE [2]. Both algorithms strongly depend on input parameters and default values did not lead to the correct phases. Therefore a systematic search of optimal values of several parameters was used to find a solution. This method helped to confirm sulphur substructure and to differentiate the handedness of the solutions. Moreover, a script for comfortable conversion of SHELX outputs to MTZ format was developed, using programmes included in the CCP4 package [3]. The previously unsolvable protein structure was successfully resolved with the described procedure. This work was supported by the Grant Agency of the Czech Technical University in Prague, (SGS13/219/OHK4/3T/14), the Czech Science Foundation (P302/11/0855), project BIOCEV CZ.1.05/1.1.00/02.0109 from the ERDF.


2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikael Elias ◽  
Dorothee Liebschner ◽  
Jurgen Koepke ◽  
Claude Lecomte ◽  
Benoit Guillot ◽  
...  

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