M.Fischer
et al.
(2015).
One Crystal, Two Temperatures: Cryocooling Penalties Alter Ligand Binding to Transient Protein Sites.
Chembiochem,
16,
1560-1564.
PubMed id: 26032594
DOI: 10.1002/cbic.201500196
One Crystal, Two Temperatures: Cryocooling Penalties Alter Ligand Binding to Transient Protein Sites.
M.Fischer,
B.K.Shoichet,
J.S.Fraser.
ABSTRACT
Interrogating fragment libraries by X-ray crystallography is a powerful strategy
for discovering allosteric ligands for protein targets. Cryocooling of crystals
should theoretically increase the fraction of occupied binding sites and
decrease radiation damage. However, it might also perturb protein conformations
that can be accessed at room temperature. Using data from crystals measured
consecutively at room temperature and at cryogenic temperature, we found that
transient binding sites could be abolished at the cryogenic temperatures
employed by standard approaches. Changing the temperature at which the
crystallographic data was collected could provide a deliberate perturbation to
the equilibrium of protein conformations and help to visualize hidden sites with
great potential to allosterically modulate protein function.