Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2017:1607:467-489.
doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-7000-1_20.

Radiation Damage in Macromolecular Crystallography

Elspeth F Garman  1 , Martin Weik  2
Affiliations
Review

Radiation Damage in Macromolecular Crystallography

Elspeth F Garman et al. Methods Mol Biol. 2017.

Abstract

Radiation damage inflicted on macromolecular crystals during X-ray diffraction experiments remains a limiting factor for structure solution, even when samples are cooled to cryotemperatures (~100 K). Efforts to establish mitigation strategies are ongoing and various approaches, summarized below, have been investigated over the last 15 years, resulting in a deeper understanding of the physical and chemical factors affecting damage rates. The recent advent of X-ray free electron lasers permits "diffraction-before-destruction" by providing highly brilliant and short (a few tens of fs) X-ray pulses. New fourth generation synchrotron sources now coming on line with higher X-ray flux densities than those available from third generation synchrotrons will bring the issue of radiation damage once more to the fore for structural biologists.

Keywords: Absorbed dose; Cryocrystallography; Global and specific radiation damage; Radiation damage mitigation; Radicals and their scavengers; X-ray-matter interactions.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

LinkOut - more resources