I'm working on a membrane protein. For now I have gotten many difference type crystal. I find the most beautiful crystal has the most bad diffraction (< 20A）while others (6~15A). But I don't want to give up this crystal, what should I do?
Heras B, Edeling MA, Byriel KA, Jones A, Raina S, Martin JL. Dehydration
converts DsbG crystal diffraction from low to high resolution. Structure. 2003
Feb;11(2):139-45. PubMed PMID: 12575933.
.. did not help in my case..
Ultimately, it doesn't matter what the crystal looks like, how it diffracts is the key.
In the words of Benjamin Franklin: Beauty and folly are old companions.
Many crystallographers will tell you that the really ugly crystal turned out to be the one that diffracted best.
Try changing temp to lower if your are growing at room temp. Try slowing down crystal formation by playing around with your condition. Try gradient. You may try seeding both macro and micro. It has worked for me on several times. If above thing donot work cross check if your construct is ok. Sometimes tag removal helps. At the end it all about crystal packing and whatever effects packing will have direct bearing on diffraction. Also, consider changing condition by re-screening. Once you are done with above only then you may try dehydration
I have had success previously by using a method called crystal annealing. If you have crystals that aren't doing well on the beam, then this method is always worth a try:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17172759
I would recommend you to first try post-crystallization treatments, such as annealing, dehydration and cross-linking, as described in
Post-crystallization treatments for improving diffraction quality of protein crystals, Acta Crystallogr D Biol Crystallogr. 2005 61(Pt 9):1173-80.
If no diffraction improvement is acquired, consider to optimize another crystallization condition if you have or modify your protein by making new construct.
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