X-ray Crystallography course for undergraduate students at

the University of Hamburg

M. Perbandt, K. Verschueren1 W. Rypniewski2 and Ch. Betzel

Department of Biochemistry, University of Hamburg, Martin-Luther-King-Platz 6, 20146 Hamburg, Germany 1Institute of Biochemistry, University of Lübeck, Ratzebuger Allee 160, 23538 Lübeck

2Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Noskowskiego 12/14, 61-704 Poznan, Poland

• Synchrotron Radiation was used for 2x 24h at the EMBL Beam Line X11 and at the CRG Beam Line X13, operated by the University of Lübeck, University Hamburg & EMBL.

• in total 21 undergraduate students of Biochemistry & Molecularbiology, shown in Figure 1, were trained in sub-groups to apply synchrotron radiation to collect diffraction data from selected protein crystals

• crystals of different morphology, cell dimensions as well as diffraction power were selected to introduce and demonstrate real crystallographic data collection with synchrotron radiation, as well as processing. requirements and limitations to indexing and integrate diffraction images

• the advantages of the application of Synchrotron Radiation were clearly demonstrated and discussed on-line

• diffraction data were collected at room temperature; the application of cryogenic techniques trained as well. Diffraction data from moderate resolution to atomic resolution were collected and processed.

• quality parameters as the mosaic spread and Rsymm values were practically explained and analysed

• other techniques as EXAFS, SAXS, were introduced complementary to demonstrate the entire impact of synchrotron radiation for Structural Biochemistry and to introduce a figure of the large facility DESY

• as in previous years, inspired by the practical courses, several graduate students will continue Diplom- and later on PhD thesis in macromolecular structure analysis

Figure 1

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