Crystallisation and characterisation of muscle proteins: a mini-review

The techniques of X-ray protein crystallography, NMR and high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy have all been used to determine the high-resolution structure of proteins. The most-commonly used method, however, remains X-ray crystallography but it does rely heavily on the production of suitable crystals. Indeed, the production of diffraction quality crystals remains the rate-limiting step for most protein systems. This mini-review highlights the crystallisation trials that used existing and newly developed crystallisation methods on two muscle protein targets - the actin binding domain (ABD) of α-actinin and the C0-C1 domain of human cardiac myosin binding protein C (cMyBP-C). Furthermore, using heterogenous nucleating agents the crystallisation of the C1 domain of cMyBP-C was successfully achieved in house along with preliminary actin binding studies using electron microscopy and co-sedimentation assays .