X-Nico

10 unusual facts about X-ray crystallography


Absolute configuration

Absolute configurations for a chiral molecule (in pure form) are most often obtained by X-ray crystallography.

Fast protein liquid chromatography

The range of purity required can be from that required for basic analysis (SDS-PAGE or ELISA, for example), with only bulk impurities removed, to pure enough for structural analysis (NMR or X-ray crystallography), approaching >99% target molecule.

Geoffrey B. Jameson

He is Director of the Centre for Structural Biology, and a crystallographer, using X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy to determine the structure of materials.

Kenneth Nyitray Trueblood

His organization of a departmental X-ray crystallography lab served as a worldwide model for other chemistry departments.

Padmanabhan Balaram

To do this, he has extensively used techniques such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy, Infrared spectroscopy, and Circular Dichroism, along with X-ray crystallography.

SMG6

This structure for this domain has been determined by X-ray crystallography.

Spin crossover

X-ray crystallography is used to measure the bond distances between the metal and the ligands, which give insight into the spin state of the complex.

Due to the changes in magnetic properties that occur from a spin transition - the complex being more diamagnetic in a LS state and more paramagnetic in a HS state - magnetic susceptibility measurements as a function of temperature are most commonly used in addition to optical spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography.

Typically, bond lengths determined by X-ray crystallography show a small decrease at increasing temperatures due to an increase in the amplitude of atom vibrations, which is the case seen here above 110 K for the average Co-N bond lengths (1.90 Å at 200 K and 1.89 Å at 298 K for the top axial CoIII ion and 1.88 Å at 200 K and 1.84 Å at 298 K for the bottom axial CoIII ion, Figure 11).

Trans effect

The structural trans effect can be measured experimentally using X-ray crystallography, and is observed as a stretching of the bonds between the metal and the ligand trans to a trans-influencing ligand.


Hairpin ribozyme

The structure and activity of the hairpin ribozyme has been explored using a wide range of complementary experimental methods, including nucleotide replacement, functional group substitution, combinatorial selection, fluorescence spectroscopy, covalent crosslinking, NMR analysis and x-ray crystallography.

Michael Laing

He graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles in the field of x-ray crystallography, specializing in the determination of molecular structure.

RasMol

These have been uploaded by researchers who have characterized the structure of molecules usually by X-ray crystallography, NMR spectroscopy or electron microscopy.