The Link to X-Ray Protein Crystallography


A. Crystal Production

(wet lab)

  1. Production
  2. Purification
  3. Crystallisation

 

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B. Data Collection

(x-ray lab)

  1. Mounting
  2. Shooting
  3. Detection

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C. Structure Solution

(computer lab)

  1. Indexing
  2. Integration
  3. Scaling
  4. Phasing
  5. Building
  6. Refinement
  7. Validation
  8. Publication

Crystal Production

The production of a protein crystal is the crucial and most time consuming step in protein crystallography. The procedure follows very much the trial and error principle. It is wise to start with a simple system and only if it does not work, add some more sophisticated steps. It is also wise to check at each step whether it was successful (as a good scientist does anyway) so you can be sure that the work for the next step is worth doing.

Critical variables on this way are

  1. Amount of protein
  2. Purity of protein
  3. Storage/freshness of protein
  4. Growth conditions of the crystal

Mission / Organisations / Trivia / Links / Florian Fisch / 5 June 2009