Methods in Fiber Diffraction Analysis of Macromolecules

该奖项为继续发展用于大分子组装结构分析的x射线纤维衍射技术提供了资金。典型的这种组合包括病毒粒子、其他核蛋白复合物和细胞骨架细丝。这项技术已经使用多年，并且已经在生物学中发挥了关键作用，例如，沃森和克里克发现了DNA的结构。然而，在这些研究将解决的样品制备和数据分析方面仍然存在重大挑战。使用x射线在原子水平上分析分子结构是我们对具有生物学重要性的分子结构的知识最近迅速发展的关键。许多信息来自晶体学研究，在这些研究中，对象分子在分析之前从溶液中结晶。光纤衍射技术的使用消除了这种困难、耗时和常常不可能完成的任务的需要。然而，由于制备和分析生物大分子样品的方法尚不完善，纤维衍射技术尚未得到广泛应用。这些方法的进展可以预期在理解大型大分子组件的结构方面发挥重要作用，其中许多不适合用更传统的分析方法进行分析。

This award provides funds for the continued development of X-ray fiber diffraction techniques for structural analysis of macromolecular assemblies. Typical such assemblies include virions, other nucleoprotein complexes, and cytoskeletal filaments. The technique has been used for years and has already played a key role in biology through, for example, the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick. However, there remain significant challenges with respect to sample preparation and data analysis which these studies will address. The use of X-rays to analyze molecular structure at the atomic level has been key to the recent, rapid advance in our knowledge of the structure of molecules of biological importance. Much of the information has come from crystallographic studies in which the subject molecules are crystallized from solution prior to the analysis. The use of fiber diffraction techniques eliminates the need for this difficult, time consuming, and often impossible task. However, because the methods for sample preparation and analysis of large biological molecules are as yet poorly worked out, the fiber diffraction techniques has not been widely adopted. Progress in development of these methods can be expected to play an important role in understanding the structure of large macromolecular assemblies, many of which are poorly suited to analysis by more conventional analyses.