The early history of cryo-cooling for macromolecular crystallography

IUCrJ
David J Haas

Abstract

This paper recounts the first successful cryo-cooling of protein crystals that demonstrated the reduction in X-ray damage to macromolecular crystals. The project was suggested by David C. Phillips in 1965 at the Royal Institution of Great Britain and continued in 1967 at the Weizmann Institute of Science, where the first cryo-cooling experiments were performed on lysozyme crystals, and was completed in 1969 at Purdue University on lactate dehydrogenase crystals. A 1970 publication in Acta Crystallographica described the cryo-procedures, the use of cryo-protectants to prevent ice formation, the importance of fast, isotropic cryo-cooling and the collection of analytical data showing more than a tenfold decrease in radiation damage in cryo-cooled lactate dehydrogenase crystals. This was the first demonstration of any method that reduced radiation damage in protein crystals, which provided crystallographers with suitable means to employ synchrotron X-ray sources for protein-crystal analysis. Today, fifty years later, more than 90% of the crystal structures deposited in the Protein Data Bank have been cryo-cooled.

References

Jan 1, 1990·Annual Review of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry·H Hope
Feb 1, 1988·Acta Crystallographica. Section B, Structural Science·H Hope
Jul 15, 1970·Acta Crystallographica. Section B, Structural Science·D J Haas, M G Rossmann
Oct 10, 1967·Acta Crystallographica·D J Haas
May 1, 1984·Journal of Medicinal Chemistry·P J Goodford
Feb 28, 2015·Journal of Synchrotron Radiation·Elspeth F Garman, Martin Weik
Feb 28, 2015·Journal of Synchrotron Radiation·Markus GerstelElspeth F Garman
Jun 10, 2015·Acta Crystallographica. Section F, Structural Biology Communications·J W Pflugrath

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Citations

Jul 18, 2020·F1000Research·Michael C ThompsonJose A Rodriguez
Nov 11, 2020·Biochemical Society Transactions·Tristan O C KwanIsabel Moraes
Feb 10, 2021·Acta Crystallographica. Section D, Structural Biology·Iosifina SarrouHenry Chapman

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
X-ray

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