What are the applications of protein crystallography?
There are major pharmaceutical applications associated with protein crystallization: medicinal chemistry via structural biology, protein drug development, scale-up, separation and purification, formulation and drug delivery..
Applications of X-ray Crystallography
Structural Biology: Reveals protein and nucleic acid structures for drug discovery.
Drug Discovery and Design: Optimizes drug candidates and understands binding modes.
Material Science: Analyzes crystal structures for developing new materials.
Neutron crystallography is often used to help refine structures obtained by X-ray methods or to solve a specific bond; the methods are often viewed as complementary, as X-rays are sensitive to electron positions and scatter most strongly off heavy atoms, while neutrons are sensitive to nucleus positions and scatter
In the instrument, the sample is mounted on to a goniometer
Scientific study of macromolecules
Cryo bio-crystallography is the application of crystallography to biological macromolecules at cryogenic temperatures.
Crystallography applications
Racemic crystallography is a technique used in structural biology where crystals of a protein molecule are developed from an equimolar mixture of an L-protein molecule of natural chirality and its D-protein mirror image. L-protein molecules consist of 'left-handed' L-amino acids and the achiral amino acid glycine, whereas the mirror image D-protein molecules consist of 'right-handed' D-amino acids and glycine. Typically, both the L-protein and the D-protein are prepared by total chemical synthesis.
