Published in

International Union of Crystallography, Acta Crystallographica Section D: Biological Crystallography, 9(69), p. 1839-1849, 2013

DOI: 10.1107/s0907444913018027

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Humidity control and hydrophilic glue coating applied to mounted protein crystals improves X-ray diffraction experiments

Journal article published in 2013 by Seiki Baba, Takeshi Hoshino, Len Ito, Takashi Kumasaka ORCID
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Postprint: archiving allowed
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Protein crystals are fragile, and it is sometimes difficult to find conditions suitable for handling and cryocooling the crystals before conducting X-ray diffraction experiments. To overcome this issue, a protein crystal-mounting method has been developed that involves a water-soluble polymer and controlled humid air that can adjust the moisture content of a mounted crystal. By coating crystals with polymer glue and exposing them to controlled humid air, the crystals were stable at room temperature and were cryocooled under optimized humidity. Moreover, the glue-coated crystals reproducibly showed gradual transformations of their lattice constants in response to a change in humidity; thus, using this method, a series of isomorphous crystals can be prepared. This technique is valuable when working on fragile protein crystals, including membrane proteins, and will also be useful for multi-crystal data collection.