Abstract
Radiation damage inflicted during diffraction data collection in macromolecular crystallography has re-emerged in the last decade as a major experimental and computational challenge, as even for crystals held at 100 K it can result in severe data quality degradation and the appearance in solved structures of artifacts which affect biological interpretations. Here, the observable symptoms and basic physical processes involved in radiation damage will be described and the concept of absorbed dose as the basic metric against which to monitor the experimentally observed changes outlined. Investigations into radiation damage in macromolecular crystallography are ongoing and the number of studies is rapidly increasing as the topic has now become of mainstream interest.
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Acknowledgments
The brief summary above represents the fruits of over 10 years of effort by a number of researchers worldwide. Radiation damage investigations are difficult and laborious and it is time consuming to obtain statistically significant results. I thank the past and present members of my research group in Oxford for their persistence and determination, and am very grateful for their inspiration, insight and energy in working towards an understanding of the various relevant phenomena.
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Garman, E.F. (2013). Radiation Damage in Macromolecular Crystallography: What Is It and Why Do We Care?. In: Read, R., Urzhumtsev, A., Lunin, V. (eds) Advancing Methods for Biomolecular Crystallography. NATO Science for Peace and Security Series A: Chemistry and Biology. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6232-9_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6232-9_7
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