by Peter Nollert
August 7, 2009 20:59
What's the most significant parameter to a successful protein crystallization and structure determination project?
At the top of my list: choose the right target.
Of course that's easier said than done, but true nonetheless. Often you're not in charge of the actual target, but you may have some say in the precise sequence of the protein target you'll be subjecting to a crystallization trial. The problem hence is shifted: how exactly does the target need to look like in order to be crystallizable? Recently there have been a few papers published on this topic that may help you in the early phase of your structure determination project. To make things really simple, there are two online services that help you to assess crystallizability starting from protein sequence:
There's the SECRET server, discussed in this paper:
http://mips.helmholtz-muenchen.de/secret/secret.seam
While CRYSTALP2 is supposed to work even better as claimed by the authors, this tool is somewhat less convenient to use. It requires to install software on your own machine and some command line type input: http://biomine.ece.ualberta.ca/CRYSTALP2/CRYSTALP2.html
Disclaimer: I've never used any of these services myself but would love to hear about results.
Peter