Cryo-protectant-protocol 冷冻保护剂.pdf

topical reviews Acta Crystallographica Section D Post-crystallization treatments for improving Biological Crystallography diffraction quality of protein crystals ISSN 0907-4449 Begona Heras* and Jennifer L. X-ray crystallography is the most powerful method for Received 19 April 2005 ˜ Martin determining the three-dimensional structure of biological Accepted 22 June 2005 macromolecules. One of the major obstacles in the process is the production of high-quality crystals for structure determi- Institute for Molecular Bioscience and ARC nation. All too often, crystals are produced that are of poor Special Research Centre for Functional and Applied Genomics, University of Queensland, quality and are unsuitable for diffraction studies. This review Brisbane QLD 4072, Australia provides a compilation of post-crystallization methods that can convert poorly diffracting crystals into data-quality crystals. Protocols for annealing, dehydration, soaking and Correspondence e-mail: cross-linking are outlined and examples of some spectacular b.heras@imb.uq.edu.au changes in crystal quality are provided. The protocols are easily incorporated into the structure-determination pipeline Begona