Protein Crystallization Hits

Protein crystallization and structure determination has adapted a fairly standardized reporting schema - think PepcDB and "Table 1". When you look into any recent of Acta Cryst D you'll usually see a number of papers with titles starting like this: "Purification, crystallization and preliminary X-ray diffraction analysis of XY protein from Z organism". Then, in a second paper (often published in a higher impact factor journal) the features of the protein structures are interpreted and brought into context with the biological function and implications thereof.

Frankly I enjoy the crystallization reports more than reading about the actual structures. The details of the 'crystallization story' can be quite fascinating, especially in cases where the paper gives you a sense of the challenges that had to be overcome for this particular target protein. In many cases though, the crystallization and the structure description are published in a single seminal publication and the crystallization story gets buried or is lost unmentioned. This is a shame I think, because the detailed description of the crystallization story is often the start for new work by a different person or group. And in cases where the description of the crystallization is meager, weeks, months or years of time and effort may need to be spend just to reproduce what has been done already.

Of course I'm all in favor of and welcome a structured way of reporting crystallization conditions such as given by the PepcDB. Crystallization data needs to be captured in ways to be minable and to provide easy access. It's clear though, that often you'll gain more insight into the peculiarities of a particular protein only when you dig into the story behind the "Purification, crystallization and preliminary X-ray diffraction analysis" paper.

Enjoy reading the prose,

Peter