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.

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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.

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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.