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A Newcomer′s Guide to Peptide Crystallography
Author(s) -
Spencer Ryan K.,
Nowick James S.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
israel journal of chemistry
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.908
H-Index - 54
eISSN - 1869-5868
pISSN - 0021-2148
DOI - 10.1002/ijch.201400179
Subject(s) - protein data bank (rcsb pdb) , chemistry , crystallography , protein data bank , supramolecular chemistry , peptide , x ray crystallography , supramolecular assembly , diffraction , phase (matter) , crystal structure , protein structure , stereochemistry , biochemistry , physics , organic chemistry , optics
Herein we provide a guide for adapting the tools developed for protein X‐ray crystallography to study the structures and supramolecular assembly of peptides. Peptide crystallography involves selecting a suitable peptide, crystallizing the peptide, collecting X‐ray diffraction data, processing the diffraction data, determining the crystallographic phases and generating an electron density map, building and refining models, and depositing the crystallographic structure in the Protein Data Bank (PDB). Advances in technology make this process easy for a newcomer to adopt. This paper describes techniques for determining the X‐ray crystallographic structures of peptides: incorporation of amino acids containing heavy atoms for crystallographic phase determination, commercially available kits to crystallize peptides, modern techniques for X‐ray crystallographic data collection, and free user‐friendly software for data processing and producing a crystallographic structure.