Determination of damage-free crystal structure of an X-ray-sensitive protein using an XFEL.

Hirata, Kunio; Shinzawa-Itoh, Kyoko; Yano, Naomine; Takemura, Shuhei; Kato, Koji; Hatanaka, Miki; Muramoto, Kazumasa; Kawahara, Takako et al. · Nat Methods · 2014

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

We report a method of femtosecond crystallography for solving radiation damage-free crystal structures of large proteins at sub-angstrom spatial resolution, using a large single crystal and the femtosecond pulses of an X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL). We demonstrated the performance of the method by determining a 1.9-Å radiation damage-free structure of bovine cytochrome c oxidase, a large (420-kDa), highly radiation-sensitive membrane protein.

Medical subject headings