Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering Commons^™

Improving Crystallographic Macromolecular Images: The Real-Space Approach, A. D. Podjarny, T. N. Bhat, Martin Zwick

Systems Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Macromolecular crystallographicy is a unique tool for imaging the structures of proteins and nucleic acids. Images are obtained from the Fourier transform of the diffraction pattern of the crystal by use of X-ray, neutron, and / or electron scattering. When X-ray and neutron scattering are used only diffraction amplitudes are experimentally measured, and phases have to be obtained. Multiple isomorphous replacement (MIR) has been the technique of choice for solving this phase problem in the determination of most macromolecular structures. Unfortunately, the method is extremely time consuming, especially when compared with the solution techniques available for small molecules; moreover, structure …