In situ data collection and structure refinement from microcapillary protein crystallization.

Yadav, Maneesh K; Gerdts, Cory J; Sanishvili, Ruslan; Smith, Ward W; Roach, L Spencer; Ismagilov, Rustem F; Kuhn, Peter; Stevens, Raymond C

In situ X-ray data collection has the potential to eliminate the challenging task of mounting and cryocooling often fragile protein crystals, reducing a major bottleneck in the structure determination process. An apparatus used to grow protein crystals in capillaries and to compare the background X-ray scattering of the components, including thin-walled glass capillaries against Teflon, and various fluorocarbon oils against each other, is described. Using thaumatin as a test case at 1.8 Ã… resolution, this study demonstrates that high-resolution electron density maps and refined models can be obtained from in situ diffraction of crystals grown in microcapillaries.