EVALUATION OF QUALITY OF MACROMOLECULAR CRYSTALS

University Of Chicago, Chicago IL

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Abstract

This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. The subproject and investigator (PI) may have received primary funding from another NIH source, and thus could be represented in other CRISP entries. The institution listed is for the Center, which is not necessarily the institution for the investigator. BioCARS is offering crystal evaluation sessions where beamtime is allocated on a short notice to local user groups to test and evaluate their new crystals. A critical part of any crystallographic project is optimization and evaluation of crystal quality and new crystal forms. This process is usually painstakingly done on a rotating anode at the home institution. We propose to continue with offering such evaluation at the Sector 14. Very intense synchrotron X-ray source provides important advantages: it greatly speeds up the process, obtained diffraction images provide better indication of crystal quality and testing of small or weakly diffracting crystals becomes possible. Our previous evaluation sessions have proven very popular and valuable to local users. We are offering these sessions only to already registered APS users with current training, so some of the data collected under this proposal could also be associated with other general user proposals.