Wall Michael E
Center for Nonlinear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA.
Methods Mol Biol. 2009;544:269-79. doi: 10.1007/978-1-59745-483-4_17.
Proteins in thermal equilibrium are associated with conformational distributions rather than single, static structures. Although there are no experimental methods to measure the full protein conformational distribution, several methods exist to probe important aspects. Diffuse X-ray scattering is one such method. We have measured the first three-dimensional reciprocal-space maps of the intensity of diffuse X-ray reflections from protein crystals, and used them to characterize protein conformational distributions. With straightforward modifications, X-ray beamlines can be engineered to enable diffuse scattering measurements for protein crystals. To facilitate future studies, the Lunus software package, used to create the first three-dimensional maps of diffuse X-ray reflections from protein crystals, has been made publicly available ( http://lunus.sourceforge.net ).
处于热平衡状态的蛋白质与构象分布相关联，而非单一的静态结构。尽管目前尚无实验方法可测量完整的蛋白质构象分布，但有几种方法可用于探究其重要方面。漫散射X射线散射就是其中一种方法。我们已测量了蛋白质晶体漫散射X射线反射强度的前三维倒易空间图谱，并利用这些图谱来表征蛋白质的构象分布。通过简单的修改，X射线束线可被设计用于对蛋白质晶体进行漫散射测量。为便于未来的研究，用于创建蛋白质晶体漫散射X射线反射的首个三维图谱的Lunus软件包已公开发布（http://lunus.sourceforge.net）。
