How to avoid premature decay of your macromolecular crystal: a quick soak for long life

Radiation damage to biological samples is currently one of the major limiting factors in macromolecular X-ray crystallography, since it severely and irreversibly affects the quality of the data that can be obtained from a diffraction experiment. However, radiation damage can effectively be reduced by utilizing the electron and radical scavenging potential of certain small-molecule compounds. We propose an approach to protect macromolecular crystals prior to data collection by quick soaking with scavengers. This, in favorable cases, can more than double crystal lifetime in the X-ray beam. The approach has the potential to yield diffraction data of superior quality and hence to increase the amount of high-quality diffraction data and of structural information attainable from a single crystal.