Microgravity crystallization and neutron diffraction of perdeuterated tryptophan synthase

Macromolecular crystallization in microgravity

Density difference fluid flows and sedimentation of growing crystals are greatly reduced when crystallization takes place in a reduced gravity environment. In the case of macromolecular crystallography a crystal of a biological macromolecule is used for diffraction experiments (x-ray or neutron) so as to determine the three-dimensional structure of the macromolecule. The better the internal ord...

Crystallization and X-ray diffraction of a halogenating enzyme, tryptophan 7-halogenase, from Pseudomonas fluorescens.

Chlorination of natural products is often required for their biological activity; notable examples include vancomycin, the last-ditch antibiotic. It is now known that many chlorinated natural products are made not by haloperoxidases, but by FADH2-dependent halogenases. The mechanism of the flavin-containing enzymes is obscure and there are no structural data. Here, crystals of PrnA (tryptophan ...

Experimental setup for simultaneous measurements of neutron diffraction and dielectric spectroscopy during crystallization of liquids

Crystallization and preliminary X-ray diffraction study of the farnesyl diphosphate synthase from Trypanosoma brucei.

Farnesyl diphosphate synthase (FPPS) catalyses the formation of farnesyl diphosphate from dimethylallyl diphosphate and isopentenyl diphosphate and is an RNAi-validated drug target in Trypanosoma brucei, the causative agent of African sleeping sickness. A T. brucei FPPS (390 amino acids) has been expressed in Escherichia coli and the recombinant protein has been crystallized in the absence and ...

Crystallization and Preliminary X-ray Diffraction of a Halophilic Archaeal Malate Synthase

Malate synthases found in cells of the halophilic Archaea constitute a third isoform of this important metabolic enzyme, in addition to the well characterized A and G isoforms. They share little sequence similarity with these other two isoforms. Database searches using basic local alignments reveal relationships between isoforms A and G, but do not indicate a significant sequence relationship b...