The proteins residing in the outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria all have beta barrel structure. The crystallization of these porins and other beta transmembrane barrel structured proteins is aided by the fact that the protein chain can often be over expressed in substantial quantities in E.coli (as inclusion bodies) and the protein can be readily extracted in urea, purified and refolded into detergent micelles. The crystallization cocktails that have produced beta barrel membrane protein crystals are sufficiently different from those of those that have worked for alpha helical transmembrane proteins that beta barrel membrane proteins warrant their own crystallization screen. Two of such crystallization screens have been recently described:
Beta-Mem™, designed by Mikiko Tanabe and Tina Iverson from Vanderbilt University is composed of 96 formulations that are based on the analysis of previously described crystallizations of beta barrel membrane proteins:
Tanabe, M., & Iverson, T. M. (2009) A Practical Guide to X-Ray Crystallography of beta-barrel Membrane Proteins: Expression, Purification, Detergent Selection, and Crystallization. Membrane Protein Crystallization, 63, 229-267.
By the way, no need to prepare this screen yourself by hand - Beta Mem is available through Emerald Biosystems.
More than boring holes: beta barrel membrane proteins
And there's a second screen, designed primarily by So Iwata's group. it is named MemPlus™ and has 48 formulations that are based on a similar rationale: 'what has worked for many similar proteins should work for my own target as well'.
Crystallization of beta barrel membrane proteins:
Newstead, S., Hobbs, J., Jordan, D., Carpenter, E., & Iwata, S. (2008). Insights into outer membrane protein crystallization Molecular Membrane Biology, 25 (8), 631-638 DOI: 10.1080/09687680802526574
Unfortunately you can't do your own sorting with the published data since the advertised supplemental file 'beta-MP-database.xls' is not available (was not available at the time of writing this post). This file gives a nice overview, though.
All the best,
Peter