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Cryocrystallography

Home › Facilities › Cryocrystallography

Cryocrystallography has become an essential and routine tool in structural biology over the last decade as a result of observation of great reduction in radiation damage to protein crystals during X-ray diffraction experiments at cryotemperatures (Low et al., 1966; Haas and Rossmann, 1970). As radiation damage was becoming a limiting factor in the utilization of synchrotron radiation sources in the early 1990s, a simple loop-mounting method was developed for cryocrystallography by former BioCARS staff scientist Tsu-Yi Teng (Teng, 1990). The method is now widely and routinely used by the majority of protein crystallographers at synchrotron and laboratory X-ray sources.

Equipment and tools for cryocrystallography are offered to users in all three BioCARS experimental stations.

• Low, B. W., Chen, C. C. H., Berger J. E., Singman, L and Pletcher, J. F. (1966) PNAS USA 56, 1746-1750.
• Haas, D. J. and Rossmann, M. G. (1970) Acta Cryst. B26, 998-1004.
• Teng, T.-Y. (1990) J. Appl. Cryst. 23, 387-391.