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New developments in crystallography: exploring its technology, methods and scope in the molecular biosciences

Since the Protein Data Bank (PDB) was founded in 1971, there are now over 120,000 depositions, the majority of which are from X-ray crystallography and 90% of those made use of synchrotron beamlines. At the Cambridge Structure Database (CSD), founded in 1965, there are more than 800,000 ‘small molec...

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Autor principal: Helliwell, John R.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Portland Press Ltd. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6434086/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28572170
http://dx.doi.org/10.1042/BSR20170204
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author Helliwell, John R.
author_facet Helliwell, John R.
author_sort Helliwell, John R.
collection PubMed
description Since the Protein Data Bank (PDB) was founded in 1971, there are now over 120,000 depositions, the majority of which are from X-ray crystallography and 90% of those made use of synchrotron beamlines. At the Cambridge Structure Database (CSD), founded in 1965, there are more than 800,000 ‘small molecule’ crystal structure depositions and a very large number of those are relevant in the biosciences as ligands or cofactors. The technology for crystal structure analysis is still developing rapidly both at synchrotrons and in home labs. Determination of the details of the hydrogen atoms in biological macromolecules is well served using neutrons as probe. Large multi-macromolecular complexes cause major challenges to crystallization; electrons as probes offer unique advantages here. Methods developments naturally accompany technology change, mainly incremental but some, such as the tuneability, intensity and collimation of synchrotron radiation, have effected radical changes in capability of biological crystallography. In the past few years, the X-ray laser has taken X-ray crystallography measurement times into the femtosecond range. In terms of applications many new discoveries have been made in the molecular biosciences. The scope of crystallographic techniques is indeed very wide. As examples, new insights into chemical catalysis of enzymes and relating ligand bound structures to thermodynamics have been gained but predictive power is seen as not yet achieved. Metal complexes are also an emerging theme for biomedicine applications. Our studies of coloration of live and cooked lobsters proved to be an unexpected favourite with the public and schoolchildren. More generally, public understanding of the biosciences and crystallography’s role within the field have been greatly enhanced by the United Nations International Year of Crystallography coordinated by the International Union of Crystallography. This topical review describes each of these areas along with illustrative results to document the scope of each methodology.
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spelling pubmed-64340862019-04-12 New developments in crystallography: exploring its technology, methods and scope in the molecular biosciences Helliwell, John R. Biosci Rep Review Articles Since the Protein Data Bank (PDB) was founded in 1971, there are now over 120,000 depositions, the majority of which are from X-ray crystallography and 90% of those made use of synchrotron beamlines. At the Cambridge Structure Database (CSD), founded in 1965, there are more than 800,000 ‘small molecule’ crystal structure depositions and a very large number of those are relevant in the biosciences as ligands or cofactors. The technology for crystal structure analysis is still developing rapidly both at synchrotrons and in home labs. Determination of the details of the hydrogen atoms in biological macromolecules is well served using neutrons as probe. Large multi-macromolecular complexes cause major challenges to crystallization; electrons as probes offer unique advantages here. Methods developments naturally accompany technology change, mainly incremental but some, such as the tuneability, intensity and collimation of synchrotron radiation, have effected radical changes in capability of biological crystallography. In the past few years, the X-ray laser has taken X-ray crystallography measurement times into the femtosecond range. In terms of applications many new discoveries have been made in the molecular biosciences. The scope of crystallographic techniques is indeed very wide. As examples, new insights into chemical catalysis of enzymes and relating ligand bound structures to thermodynamics have been gained but predictive power is seen as not yet achieved. Metal complexes are also an emerging theme for biomedicine applications. Our studies of coloration of live and cooked lobsters proved to be an unexpected favourite with the public and schoolchildren. More generally, public understanding of the biosciences and crystallography’s role within the field have been greatly enhanced by the United Nations International Year of Crystallography coordinated by the International Union of Crystallography. This topical review describes each of these areas along with illustrative results to document the scope of each methodology. Portland Press Ltd. 2017-07-04 /pmc/articles/PMC6434086/ /pubmed/28572170 http://dx.doi.org/10.1042/BSR20170204 Text en © 2017 The Author(s). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article published by Portland Press Limited on behalf of the Biochemical Society and distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Review Articles
Helliwell, John R.
New developments in crystallography: exploring its technology, methods and scope in the molecular biosciences
title New developments in crystallography: exploring its technology, methods and scope in the molecular biosciences
title_full New developments in crystallography: exploring its technology, methods and scope in the molecular biosciences
title_fullStr New developments in crystallography: exploring its technology, methods and scope in the molecular biosciences
title_full_unstemmed New developments in crystallography: exploring its technology, methods and scope in the molecular biosciences
title_short New developments in crystallography: exploring its technology, methods and scope in the molecular biosciences
title_sort new developments in crystallography: exploring its technology, methods and scope in the molecular biosciences
topic Review Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6434086/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28572170
http://dx.doi.org/10.1042/BSR20170204
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