Hot Topics in Contemporary Crystallography

 

by Croatian Association of Crystallographers

 

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       Šibenik, Croatia, May, 10th to 15th, 2014      

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Croatian Association of Crystallographers

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Bijenička c. 54

HR-10000 Zagreb

Croatia

 

 

Elspeth Garman: Radiation damage in Macromolecular Crystallography: what is it and why do we care?

For protein crystals at room temperature, radiation damage during the diffraction experiment is rapid even on a laboratory X-ray source.  The intense X-ray beams produced by third generation synchrotrons can destroy crystalline order in a matter of seconds. Over the last 20 years, the use of cryo¬cooling techniques has become the norm [1,2]; at 100 K crystals can withstand many times the dose (J/kg = Gy) [3] compared with room temperature, and the necessary data can usually be obtained from a single crystal.

However, observations of degradation of crystal diffraction with increasing radiation dose at 100 K have now become commonplace at third generation synchrotrons. Researchers are only now elucidating the physical and chemical processes involved in this damage (reviewed in [4,5]). Enzyme active sites seem particularly sensitive to damage, often leading investigators to incorrect conclusions about biological mechanisms. Thus the issue of radiation damage during diffraction experiments has once again come to the fore as a concern for all structural biologists.

I will summarise current challenges being addressed worldwide in this active research area. Recent and ongoing improvements to our code RADDOSE-3D [6] which is used to calculate the time and spatial distribution of  dose absorbed by irradiated crystals, will be described [7].

1. Teng (1990) J Appl. Cryst. 23 387-91

2. Garman & Schneider (1997) J. Appl. Cryst. 30 211-37

3. Owen, Rudiño-Piñera & Garman (2006) PNAS 103 4912-17

4. Ravelli & Garman (2006) Current Opinion of Structural Biology 16 624-29

5. Garman (2010) Acta Cryst. D66 339-51

6. Zeldin, Gerstel & Garman, (2013)  J. Appl. Cryst46, 1225-1230

7. Zeldin, Brockhauser, Bremridge, Holton & Garman (2013) PNAS (in press)

The workshop is generously supported by:


Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia

International Union of Crystallography

European Crystallographic Association

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