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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 26, 2026

Harvesting and Cryo-cooling Crystals of Membrane Proteins Grown in Lipidic Mesophases for Structure Determination by Macromolecular Crystallography

Harvesting and Cryo-cooling Crystals of Membrane Proteins Grown in Lipidic Mesophases for Structure Determination by Macromolecular Crystallography

Published on: September 2, 2012

Phasing tiny crystals.

Jianwei Miao¹, Jose A Rodriguez²

¹Department of Physics and Astronomy, and California NanoSystems Institute, University of California , Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.

|July 31, 2014

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Diffraction intensities from tiny crystals, measurable between Bragg peaks due to limited unit cells, offer a direct method for phasing crystal structures.

Keywords:

X-ray free electron lasers coherent diffraction imaging oversampling phase retrieval

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Last Updated: Apr 26, 2026

Harvesting and Cryo-cooling Crystals of Membrane Proteins Grown in Lipidic Mesophases for Structure Determination by Macromolecular Crystallography

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Microcrystallography of Protein Crystals and In Cellulo Diffraction

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Area of Science:

Crystallography
Materials Science
Structural Biology

Background:

Directly phasing crystal structures is crucial for determining atomic arrangements.
Traditional phasing methods often face challenges with small or complex samples.
Understanding the influence of finite crystal size on diffraction is key.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the potential of measurable diffraction intensities between Bragg peaks in tiny crystals for direct structure phasing.
To explore how the limited number of unit cells in small crystals impacts diffraction patterns.
To establish a principle for utilizing these weak diffraction signals.

Main Methods:

Analysis of X-ray diffraction data from nano- to micro-sized crystals.
Theoretical modeling of diffraction intensities considering finite crystal size effects.
Comparison of diffraction patterns with and between Bragg peaks.

Main Results:

Diffraction intensities at and between Bragg peaks were found to be measurable for tiny crystals.
The limited number of unit cells directly influences these measurable intensities.
These intensities contain structural information that can be exploited for phasing.

Conclusions:

Measurable diffraction intensities between Bragg peaks in tiny crystals provide a viable route for direct crystal structure phasing.
This approach offers a potential alternative for phasing challenging samples where traditional methods fail.
Further development could enable routine structure determination from nanocrystalline materials.