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Initiating heavy-atom-based phasing by multi-dimensional molecular replacement

To obtain an electron-density map from a macromolecular crystal the phase problem needs to be solved, which often involves the use of heavy-atom derivative crystals and concomitant heavy-atom substructure determination. This is typically performed by dual-space methods, direct methods or Patterson-b...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Pedersen, Bjørn Panyella, Gourdon, Pontus, Liu, Xiangyu, Karlsen, Jesper Lykkegaard, Nissen, Poul
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: International Union of Crystallography 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4784675/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26960131
http://dx.doi.org/10.1107/S2059798315022482
Descripción
Sumario:To obtain an electron-density map from a macromolecular crystal the phase problem needs to be solved, which often involves the use of heavy-atom derivative crystals and concomitant heavy-atom substructure determination. This is typically performed by dual-space methods, direct methods or Patterson-based approaches, which however may fail when only poorly diffracting derivative crystals are available. This is often the case for, for example, membrane proteins. Here, an approach for heavy-atom site identification based on a molecular-replacement parameter matrix (MRPM) is presented. It involves an n-dimensional search to test a wide spectrum of molecular-replacement parameters, such as different data sets and search models with different conformations. Results are scored by the ability to identify heavy-atom positions from anomalous difference Fourier maps. The strategy was successfully applied in the determination of a membrane-protein structure, the copper-transporting P-type ATPase CopA, when other methods had failed to determine the heavy-atom substructure. MRPM is well suited to proteins undergoing large conformational changes where multiple search models should be considered, and it enables the identification of weak but correct molecular-replacement solutions with maximum contrast to prime experimental phasing efforts.