A 7μm mini-beam improves diffraction data from small or imperfect crystals of macromolecules.

ABSTRACT: A simple apparatus for achieving beam sizes in the range 5-10 μm on a synchrotron beamline was implemented in combination with a small 125 x 25 μm focus. The resulting beam had sufficient flux for crystallographic data collection from samples smaller than 10 x 10 x 10 μm. Sample data were collected representing three different scenarios: (i) a complete 2.0 data set from a single strongly diffracting microcrystal, (ii) a complete and redundant 1.94 A data set obtained by merging data from six microcrystals and (iii) a complete 2.24 A data set from a needle-shaped crystal with less than 12 x 10 μm cross-section and average diffracting power. The resulting data were of high quality, leading to well refined structures with good electron-density maps. The signal-to-noise ratios for data collect

SUBMITTER: Sanishvili R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2631116 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature