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Identifying and Overcoming Crystal Pathologies: Disorder and Twinning

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Protein Crystallography

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 1607))

Abstract

Macromolecular crystals are prone to a number of pathologies that result from aberrant molecular packing. Two common pathologies encountered in macromolecular crystals are rigid-body disorder and twinning. When a crystal displays one of these pathologies, its diffraction pattern is altered in a way that generally complicates structure determination. The severity of the underlying abnormalities varies from case to case, and sometimes the resulting alterations to the diffraction pattern are immediately obvious, while at other times they may go entirely unnoticed. Structure determination from a crystal that suffers from disorder or twinning may or may not be possible, depending on the specific nature of the pathology, and on how the data are handled. This chapter provides an introduction to these pathologies, with an emphasis on providing guidelines for identifying and overcoming them when they pose a threat to successful structure determination.

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Acknowledgments

I thank Todd Yeates for sharing his expertise on these subjects over the years. Additionally, I thank Tanja Kortemme, Yao-Ming Huang, Peter Cimmermančič, and Andrej Sali for sharing crystal and diffraction images, and Benjamin Barad for assistance with preparing data for figures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, University of California, San Francisco, Box 2240, 600 16th Street, S476, San Francisco, CA, 94158, USA

    Michael C. Thompson

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  1. Michael C. Thompson
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Correspondence to Michael C. Thompson .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Macromolecular Crystallography Laboratory, National Cancer Institute, Frederick, Maryland, USA

    Alexander Wlodawer

  2. Synchrotron Radiation Research Section, MCL, National Cancer Institute, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois, USA

    Zbigniew Dauter

  3. Department of Crystallography, Faculty of Chemistry, A. Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland

    Mariusz Jaskolski

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Thompson, M.C. (2017). Identifying and Overcoming Crystal Pathologies: Disorder and Twinning. In: Wlodawer, A., Dauter, Z., Jaskolski, M. (eds) Protein Crystallography. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1607. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7000-1_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7000-1_8

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