Schmidt Marius, Stojković Emina A
Physics Department, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 3135 N. Maryland Ave., Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53211, USA.
Department of Biology, Northeastern Illinois University, 5500 N. St. Louis Ave., Chicago, Illinois 60625, USA.
Struct Dyn. 2024 Jan 31;11(1):014701. doi: 10.1063/4.0000233. eCollection 2024 Jan.
Time-resolved crystallography (TRX) is a method designed to investigate functional motions of biological macromolecules on all time scales. Originally a synchrotron-based method, TRX is enabled by the development of TR Laue crystallography (TRLX). TR serial crystallography (TR-SX) is an extension of TRLX. As the foundations of TRLX were evolving from the late 1980s to the turn of the millennium, TR-SX has been inspired by the development of Free Electron Lasers for hard X-rays. Extremely intense, ultrashort x-ray pulses could probe micro and nanocrystals, but at the same time, they inflicted radiation damage that necessitated the replacement by a new crystal. Consequently, a large number of microcrystals are exposed to X-rays one by one in a serial fashion. With TR-SX methods, one of the largest obstacles of previous approaches, namely, the unsurmountable challenges associated with the investigation of non-cyclic (irreversible) reactions, can be overcome. This article describes successes and transformative contributions to the TRX field by Keith Moffat and his collaborators, highlighting two major projects on protein photoreceptors initiated in the Moffat lab at the turn of the millennium.
时间分辨晶体学（TRX）是一种旨在研究生物大分子在所有时间尺度上功能运动的方法。TRX最初是一种基于同步加速器的方法，随着TR劳厄晶体学（TRLX）的发展而得以实现。TR串行晶体学（TR-SX）是TRLX的扩展。在20世纪80年代末到千禧年之交TRLX的基础不断发展的同时，TR-SX受到了硬X射线自由电子激光发展的启发。极强、极短的X射线脉冲可以探测微米和纳米晶体，但与此同时，它们会造成辐射损伤，这就需要用新的晶体来替换。因此，大量的微晶以串行方式逐个暴露于X射线。通过TR-SX方法，可以克服先前方法的最大障碍之一，即与非循环（不可逆）反应研究相关的无法克服的挑战。本文介绍了基思·莫法特及其合作者对TRX领域的成功和变革性贡献，重点介绍了千禧年之交在莫法特实验室启动的两个关于蛋白质光感受器的重大项目。
