Conveners
Damage at New Sources - XFELs and 4th Generation Synchrotrons
- Valérie Panneels (PSI - Paul Scherrer Institut)
Radiation damage is a faithful attender to X-ray crystallographic studies of metallo-proteins. Thus, care is taken to limit the effects of radiation damage and avoid consequent misinterpretation of X-ray crystallographic results. In our study, we applied defined doses to selectively probe the redox states involved in metal binding.
We studied the cyanobacterial iron binding protein FutA, an...
solely deciphering structures and refining atomic positions, to the analysis of subtle structural effects. Examples involve unpredicted deviations in molecular geometries; the details of protonation states of functional groups, ligands and solvent molecules; occupancies of mixed states; atomic vibrations and, finally, electron density studies of active sites and ligands. Classical...
Radiation damage is major concern in macromolecular crystallography (MX) where ionising X-rays used for structure determination can result in a cascade of damaging processes caused by the absorption of energy (denoted mainly as dose: absorbed energy/mass (J/kg; Gray (G)) and radiolysis of molecules. These can introduce artefacts within the structure (specific damage) and the overall data...
Serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) exploits extremely brief X-ray free-electron laser pulses to obtain diffraction data before destruction of the crystal. However, during the pulse X-ray-induced site-specific radiation damage can occur, leading to electronic state and/or structural changes. Here, we present a systematic exploration of the effect of single-pulse duration and energy (and...
