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International
Tables for Crystallography Volume C Mathematical, physical and chemical tables Edited by E. Prince © International Union of Crystallography 2006 |
International Tables for Crystallography (2006). Vol. C. ch. 3.1, p. 148
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The preparation of single crystals probably constitutes the most important step in a crystal structure analysis, since without high-quality diffraction data many analyses will prove problematical, if not completely intractable; time and effort invested in crystallization procedures are rarely wasted. There is a wealth of literature available on the subject of growing crystals and this includes the Journal of Crystal Growth (Amsterdam: Elsevier). This section does not intend to be a comprehensive review of the subject, but rather to provide some key lines of approach with appropriate references. The field of crystallizing biological macromolecules is itself a growth area and, in consequence, has been given a special emphasis.
Useful general references for growing crystals for structure analysis include Bunn (1961![[link]](/graphics/greenarr.gif)
), Stout & Jensen (1968), Blundell & Johnson (1976), McPherson (1976, 1982, 1990), Ducruix & Giegé (1992) and Helliwell (1992). Volume D50 (Part 4) of Acta Crystallographica (1994) reports the Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Crystallization of Biological Macromolecules (San Diego, California, 1993) and is essential reading for crystallization experiments in this area. A biological macromolecular database for crystallization conditions has also been initiated (Gilliland, Tung, Blakeslee & Ladner, 1994).
References
Blundell, T. L. & Johnson, L. N. (1976). Protein crystallography, Chap. 3, pp. 59–82. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Bunn, C. W. (1961). Chemical crystallography: an introduction to optical and X-ray methods, 2nd ed., Chaps. 2, 3, 4, pp. 11–106. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ducruix, A. & Giegé, R. (1992). Editors. Crystallisation of nucleic acids and proteins: a practical approach. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gilliland, G. L., Tung, M., Blakeslee, D. M. & Ladner, J. E. (1994). Biological macromolecule crystallization database, Version 3.0: new features, data and the NASA archive for protein crystal growth data. Acta Cryst. D50, 408–413.Google Scholar
Helliwell, J. R. (1992). Macromolecular crystallography with synchrotron radiation, Chap. 2, pp. 11–23. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McPherson, A. (1976). The growth and preliminary investigation of protein and nucleic acid crystals for X-ray diffraction. Methods Biochem. Anal. 25, 249–345.Google Scholar
McPherson, A. (1982). The preparation and analysis of protein crystals. New York: John Wiley. Google Scholar
McPherson, A. (1990). Current approaches to macromolecular crystallisation. Eur. J. Biochem. 189, 1–23.Google Scholar
Stout, G. H. & Jensen, L. H. (1968). X-ray structure determination: a practical guide, Chap. 4, pp. 62–82. London: Macmillan. Google Scholar
