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  • A novel inert crystal deliv...
    Conrad, Chelsie E; Basu, Shibom; James, Daniel; Wang, Dingjie; Schaffer, Alexander; Roy-Chowdhury, Shatabdi; Zatsepin, Nadia A; Aquila, Andrew; Coe, Jesse; Gati, Cornelius; Hunter, Mark S; Koglin, Jason E; Kupitz, Christopher; Nelson, Garrett; Subramanian, Ganesh; White, Thomas A; Zhao, Yun; Zook, James; Boutet, Sébastien; Cherezov, Vadim; Spence, John C H; Fromme, Raimund; Weierstall, Uwe; Fromme, Petra

    IUCrJ, 07/2015, Letnik: 2, Številka: Pt 4
    Journal Article

    Serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) has opened a new era in crystallo-graphy by permitting nearly damage-free, room-temperature structure determination of challenging proteins such as membrane proteins. In SFX, femtosecond X-ray free-electron laser pulses produce diffraction snapshots from nanocrystals and microcrystals delivered in a liquid jet, which leads to high protein consumption. A slow-moving stream of agarose has been developed as a new crystal delivery medium for SFX. It has low background scattering, is compatible with both soluble and membrane proteins, and can deliver the protein crystals at a wide range of temperatures down to 4°C. Using this crystal-laden agarose stream, the structure of a multi-subunit complex, phycocyanin, was solved to 2.5 Å resolution using 300 µg of microcrystals embedded into the agarose medium post-crystallization. The agarose delivery method reduces protein consumption by at least 100-fold and has the potential to be used for a diverse population of proteins, including membrane protein complexes.