Purification, crystallization and preliminary X-ray data of the bacteriophage MS2

Single crystals of the bacteriophage MS2 have been produced by the vapour diffusion technique in the presence of 1.5% polyethylene glycol 6000 and 0.2 M-sodium phosphate buffer (pH 7.4). These are the first bacteriovirus crystals diffracting to high resolution. The crystal space group is C2 with the unit cell parameters a = 467.9 A, b = 289.5 A, c = 275.6 A and beta = 121.8 degrees. The asymmetric unit contains one half of the virion. The maximum resolution limit of the X-ray diffraction data obtained from these crystals was 2.9 A. The purification of the virus material was done by mild procedures exclusively and involved precipitation with polyethylene glycol 6000 and size exclusion chromatography on Sepharose CL-4B.