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An Overview of Biological Macromolecule Crystallization

The elucidation of the three dimensional structure of biological macromolecules has provided an important contribution to our current understanding of many basic mechanisms involved in life processes. This enormous impact largely results from the ability of X-ray crystallography to provide accurate...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Krauss, Irene Russo, Merlino, Antonello, Vergara, Alessandro, Sica, Filomena
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI) 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3709751/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23727935
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms140611643
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author Krauss, Irene Russo
Merlino, Antonello
Vergara, Alessandro
Sica, Filomena
author_facet Krauss, Irene Russo
Merlino, Antonello
Vergara, Alessandro
Sica, Filomena
author_sort Krauss, Irene Russo
collection PubMed
description The elucidation of the three dimensional structure of biological macromolecules has provided an important contribution to our current understanding of many basic mechanisms involved in life processes. This enormous impact largely results from the ability of X-ray crystallography to provide accurate structural details at atomic resolution that are a prerequisite for a deeper insight on the way in which bio-macromolecules interact with each other to build up supramolecular nano-machines capable of performing specialized biological functions. With the advent of high-energy synchrotron sources and the development of sophisticated software to solve X-ray and neutron crystal structures of large molecules, the crystallization step has become even more the bottleneck of a successful structure determination. This review introduces the general aspects of protein crystallization, summarizes conventional and innovative crystallization methods and focuses on the new strategies utilized to improve the success rate of experiments and increase crystal diffraction quality.
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spelling pubmed-37097512013-07-12 An Overview of Biological Macromolecule Crystallization Krauss, Irene Russo Merlino, Antonello Vergara, Alessandro Sica, Filomena Int J Mol Sci Review The elucidation of the three dimensional structure of biological macromolecules has provided an important contribution to our current understanding of many basic mechanisms involved in life processes. This enormous impact largely results from the ability of X-ray crystallography to provide accurate structural details at atomic resolution that are a prerequisite for a deeper insight on the way in which bio-macromolecules interact with each other to build up supramolecular nano-machines capable of performing specialized biological functions. With the advent of high-energy synchrotron sources and the development of sophisticated software to solve X-ray and neutron crystal structures of large molecules, the crystallization step has become even more the bottleneck of a successful structure determination. This review introduces the general aspects of protein crystallization, summarizes conventional and innovative crystallization methods and focuses on the new strategies utilized to improve the success rate of experiments and increase crystal diffraction quality. Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI) 2013-05-31 /pmc/articles/PMC3709751/ /pubmed/23727935 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms140611643 Text en © 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).
spellingShingle Review
Krauss, Irene Russo
Merlino, Antonello
Vergara, Alessandro
Sica, Filomena
An Overview of Biological Macromolecule Crystallization
title An Overview of Biological Macromolecule Crystallization
title_full An Overview of Biological Macromolecule Crystallization
title_fullStr An Overview of Biological Macromolecule Crystallization
title_full_unstemmed An Overview of Biological Macromolecule Crystallization
title_short An Overview of Biological Macromolecule Crystallization
title_sort overview of biological macromolecule crystallization
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3709751/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23727935
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijms140611643
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