I have had unheard of success with protein crystallography lately from a super successful protein expression and purification batch.
I have attained a lately reproducible vast amount of crystals of no average size. Is there a way to tell based on appearance which of these crystals should diffract the best?
All these crystals grow from a clear droplet in 12 hours.
What's the most important parameter?
* transparency?
* size?
* how intensely it reflects light? birefringence?
* geometry?
Hi there, Unfortunately there is absolutely no link between the size and appearance of a crystal and its ability to diffract. Gorgeous crystals may diffract very badly and little dirty bits may result in structure at 0.8A resolution (The opposite may also apply!).
Hi there, Unfortunately there is absolutely no link between the size and appearance of a crystal and its ability to diffract. Gorgeous crystals may diffract very badly and little dirty bits may result in structure at 0.8A resolution (The opposite may also apply!).
+1 to Dominique's answer.
Even if these crystals don't diffract brilliantly, the fact they grow quite quickly suggests that optimisation might be be straight forward... welcome to world of the dark arts (and stochastics) of crystallography!
Well, the hardest part you already did - get the crystals. So just go foward!
Make sure these aren't salt crystals before anything.
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