by Peter Nollert
March 28, 2011 09:49
Earlier this month I received an email from John Wiley & Sons, confirming that 'The supplement file is now available at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1110/ps.073263108/suppinfo'. More than half a year ago I had pointed out that the 'supplementary material' to a paper was not available online. Now it is. Took a while, but THANKS A LOT for following through, John Wiley & Sons!
When you go to this page, you can download Simon Newstead's alpha-MP-database.xls.
Although somewhat outdated, this spreadsheet contains a concise summary of crystallization conditions from 121 alpha helical membrane protein structures that are listed in the PDB. The extensive analysis of crystallization conditions is described in the accompanying paper:
Newstead S, Ferrandon S, & Iwata S (2008).
Rationalizing alpha-helical membrane protein crystallization.
Protein science, 17 (3), 466-72
PMID: 18218713
While this accounting exercise is not the sexiest of all science, it is of great interest to all of us membrane protein crystallizers . The database is a handy tool that can be consulted when only small quantities of membrane protein sample is available and one is forced to focus on 'what's worked in the past'. And of course, this data summary is incredibly for the design of new (although highly biased) crystallization matrices. This is exactly what Simon has done: based on his own analysis, a new sparse matrix crystallization screen, called MemGold is described.
Great work!
Peter