Page 6 - Macromolecular Crystallography

Preface

The nature of macromolecular crystallography has (Chapters 14 and 15), viruses, and membrane pro-
changed greatly over the past 10 years. Increas- teins (Chapter 16). Our ability to crystallize these
ingly, the field is developing into two groupings. larger assemblies and membrane proteins is increas-
One grouping are those who continue to work ingly challenging and in turn helped by robotic crys-
along traditional lines and solve structures of sin- tallization whose development was greatly spurred
gle macromolecules and their complexes within a by the needs of ‘high-throughput’ crystallography.
laboratory setting, where usually there is also exten- In this volume has been included a wide
sive accompanying biochemical, biophysical, and range of topics pertinent to the conventional
genetic studies being undertaken, either in the same and high-throughput crystallography of proteins,
laboratory or by collaboration. The other grouping RNA, protein–DNA complexes, protein expression
consists of ‘high-throughput’ research whose aim is and purification, crystallization, data collection,
take an organism and solve the structure of all pro- and techniques of structure solution and refine-
teins which it encodes. This is achieved by trying to ment. Other select topics that have been cov-
express in large amounts all the constituent proteins, ered are protein–DNA complexes, RNA crystal-
crystallizing them, and solving their structures. This lization, and virus crystallography. In this book
volume covers aspects of the X-ray crystallography we have not covered the basic aspects of X-ray
of both of these groupings. diffraction as these are well covered in a range of
Clearly, macromolecular crystallographers won- texts. One which we very strongly recommend is
der what will be the role in the future of the that written by Professor David Blow, Outline of
single research group in the context of the increas- Crystallography for Biologists, Oxford University
ing numbers of ‘high-throughput’ crystallography Press, 2002.
consortia. Certainly there will be a need for both Safety: it must be stressed that X-ray equip-
enterprises as macromolecular crystallography is ment should under no circumstances be used by
not always a straightforward process and an inter- an untrained operator. Training in its use must be
esting structural problem can be snared by many received from an experienced worker.
pitfalls along the way, be they problems of protein It remains for us as editors to thank all the contrib-
expression, folding (Chapters 1 and 2), crystalliza- utorsforalltheirhardworkinpreparingthematerial
tion, diffractibility of crystals, crystal pathologies for this volume. We should like to thank the commis-
(such as twinning), and difficulties in structure solu- sioning team at OUP, Ian Sherman, Christine Rode,
tion (Chapters 3 and 4). The success of a project Abbie Headon, Helen Eaton (for cover design prepa-
requires being able to intervene and solve problems ration), ElizabethPaulandMelissaDixonforalltheir
en route in order to take it to its successful con- hard work and advice in bringing this edited volume
clusion. As the ‘high-throughput’ crystallographic to completion.
consortia solve more single proteins, the tradi-
tional crystallographic groups are moving away M. R. Sanderson and J. V. Skelly
from similar studies towards studying protein–
protein, protein–DNA, and protein–RNAcomplexes

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