Radiation data collection

Data collection was performed at 130 K. using graphite-monochromatized MoKa radiation (/i = 0.71073 A) on a Nonius CAD4F diffractometer. Experimental details can be found in [30-32],... 

The basic function of the spectrometer is to separate the polychromatic beam of radiation coming from the specimen in order that the intensities of each individual characteristic line can be measured. In principle, the wide variety of instruments (WDXRF and EDXRF types) differ only in the type of source used for excitation, the number of elements which they are able to measure at one time and the speed of data collection. Detectors commonly employed in X-ray spectrometers are usually either a gas-flow proportional counter for heavier elements/soft X-rays (useful range E < 6keV 1.5-50 A), a scintillation counter for lighter elements/hard X-rays (E > 6keV 0.2-2 A) or a solid-state detector (0.5-8 A). 

When low-temperature studies are performed, the maximum resolution is imposed by data collection geometry and fall-off of the scattered intensities below the noise level, rather than by negligible high-resolution structure factor amplitudes. Use of Ag Ka radiation would for example allow measurement of diffracted intensities up to 0.35 A for amino-acid crystals below 30 K [40]. Similarly, model calculations show that noise-free structure factors computed from atomic core electrons would be still non-zero up to O.lA. 

KcsA crystals suitable for X-ray crystallographic analysis using synchrotron radiation were obtained and the data collected and analyzed for multiple crystals and six different data sets as described in the 1998 Science publication (reference 15). The final KcsA pore structure, including amino acid residues 23 to 119 of the K+ channel, refined to 3.2 A. The X-ray data were deposited in the Protein Data Bank with the accession number 1BL8. 

It is often necessary to flash-freeze crystals in order to prevent radiation damage during preliminary characterization and data collection. Conducting X-ray... 

In inorganic and organometallic solids, the average electron concentration tends to be high. This means that absorption and extinction effects can be severe, and that the use of hard radiation and very small crystals is frequently essential. Needless to say that the advent of synchrotron radiation has been most helpful in this respect. The weaker contribution of valence electrons compared with the scattering of first-row-atom-only solids implies that great care must be taken during data collection in order to obtain reliable information on the valence electron distribution. 

The anomalous components of the total scattering are wavelength dependent and the use of radiation close to an absorption edge may increase or optimise the contribution due to the anomalously scattering atoms. Ramaseshan (1962) pointed out that data collected at multiple wavelengths optimising the anomalous dispersion effects would improve the quality of phase determination. 

All the above techniques use incident monochromatic radiation, usually focus in one or two dimensions. However for cases a) and d) the reduction of radiation damage and more particularly in kinetic crystallography the use of polychromatic data collection is yielding promising results. This technique makes combined use of the intensity and collimation of the SR beam with a large wavelength spread for Laue data colla tion from protein single crystals. 

An extreme example of the reduction in radiation damage is that of data collection at the SRS on purine nucleoside phosphorylase. On a conventional source usually a crystal can give only one 3 A resolution still photograph before the crystal suffers serious damage. At the synchrotron three crystals will give a comptete set of 4 equivalent reflections to a resolution limit of 3 A (see case study below)... 

Further reductions in exposure time and hence radiation damage in virus crystallography may accrue from the use of white beam (modified) Laue methods preliminary work on this is in progress (Bloomer and Helliwell (1985), unpublished at the SRS and Rossmann et al. at Cornell unpublished (1986)). Data collection on some virus crystals is virtually impossible in the home laboratory. 

It took the short time of one year or so to solve the structure of rhinovirus which causes the common cold. This relied on two major advances in methods. The first was the use of synchrotron radiation in data collection. Nearly a million reflections were collected on the protein crystallography facility at the Cornell Synchrotron source in a matter of days. This conveyed a speed advantage over data collection on a conventional source and also ameliorated an otherwise impossible problem of radiation damage when long exposure times were used. The far greater rate of radiation damage in the X-ray beam in relation to plant viruses is symptomatic of an inherently less stable protein capsid and the absence of quasi-symmetry. The capsid consists of 60 copies each of four proteins and the virus with about 30 % RNA has a total molecular weight of about 8.5 million. 

The SR spectnun of an intense energy continuum of radiation makes possible rapid data collection in the sub-second regime by the Laue diffraction method. This rate of data collection is sufficient to investigate some of the crystal kinetics and catalytic intermediate reaction states that can be produced. 

We have shown that out of fifteen forms of three-dimensional crystals from ribosomal particles, grown so far in our laboratory, some appear suitable for crystallographic data collection when using synchrotron radiation at temperatures between 19 °C and —180 °C 50S subunits from H. marismortui., and from B. stearothermophilus, including the -BLl 1 mutant, and the new crystal forms from B. stearothermophilus SOS and Thermus thermophilus 30S subunits which have only recently been grown in non-volatile precipitants We also plan to continue research on biochemically modified particles, such as SOS with one tRNA and its nascent polypeptide chain (which have already been crystallized). 

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