Verdaguer Nuria, Garriga Damià, Fita Ignacio
Institut de Biología Molecular de Barcelona (CSIC), Parc Científic de Barcelona, c/Baldiri i Reixac 10, 08028, Barcelona, Spain,
Subcell Biochem. 2013;68:117-44. doi: 10.1007/978-94-007-6552-8_4.
For about 30 years X-ray crystallography has been by far the most powerful approach for determining virus structures at close to atomic resolutions. Information provided by these studies has deeply and extensively enriched and shaped our vision of the virus world. In turn, the ever increasing complexity and size of the virus structures being investigated have constituted a major driving force for methodological and conceptual developments in X-ray macromolecular crystallography. Landmarks of new virus structures determinations, such as the ones from the first animal viruses or from the first membrane-containing viruses, have often been associated to methodological breakthroughs in X-ray crystallography. In this chapter we present the common ground of proteins and virus crystallography with an emphasis in the peculiarities of virus studies. For example, the solution of the phase problem, a central issue in X-ray diffraction, has benefited enormously from the presence of non-crystallographic symmetry in virus crystals.
在近30年里，X射线晶体学一直是目前用于确定接近原子分辨率的病毒结构的最强大方法。这些研究提供的信息深刻而广泛地丰富并塑造了我们对病毒世界的认知。反过来，所研究的病毒结构日益增加的复杂性和规模构成了X射线大分子晶体学方法和概念发展的主要驱动力。新病毒结构测定的里程碑，例如来自首批动物病毒或首批含膜病毒的结构测定，常常与X射线晶体学的方法突破相关联。在本章中，我们介绍蛋白质晶体学和病毒晶体学的共同基础，重点是病毒研究的独特之处。例如，相位问题的解决，这是X射线衍射中的核心问题，极大地受益于病毒晶体中存在的非晶体学对称性。
