Identifying and quantifying radiation damage at the atomic level.

ABSTRACT: Radiation damage impedes macromolecular diffraction experiments. Alongside the well known effects of global radiation damage, site-specific radiation damage affects data quality and the veracity of biological conclusions on protein mechanism and function. Site-specific radiation damage follows a relatively predetermined pattern, in that different structural motifs are affected at different dose regimes: in metal-free proteins, disulfide bonds tend to break first followed by the decarboxylation of aspartic and glutamic acids. Even within these damage motifs the decay does not progress uniformly at equal rates. Within the same protein, radiation-induced electron density decay of a particular chemical group is faster than for the same group elsewhere in the protein: an effect known as prefere

SUBMITTER: Gerstel M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4344357 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature