Two conformational states in the crystal structure of the Homo sapiens cytoplasmic ribosomal decoding A site

The decoding A site of the small ribosomal subunit is an RNA molecular switch, which monitors codon–anticodon interactions to guarantee translation fidelity. We have solved the crystal structure of an RNA fragment containing two Homo sapiens cytoplasmic A sites. Each of the two A sites presents a different conformational state. In one state, adenines A1492 and A1493 are fully bulged-out with C1409 forming a wobble-like pair to A1491. In the second state, adenines A1492 and A1493 form non-Watson–Crick pairs with C1409 and G1408, respectively while A1491 bulges out. The first state of the eukaryotic A site is, thus, basically the same as in the bacterial A site with bulging A1492 and A1493. It is the state used for recognition of the codon/anticodon complex. On the contrary, the second state of the H.sapiens cytoplasmic A site is drastically different from any of those observed for the bacterial A site without bulging A1492 and A1493

Cluster analysis for phasing with molecular replacement: a feasibility study

Molecular replacement with the simultaneous use of several search functions may solve the phase problem when the conventional molecular-replacement procedure fails to identify the solution

Direct phasing by binary integer programming

Article dans revue scientifique avec comité de lecture.In the absence of phase information, a variety of electron-density distributions is consistent with the observed magnitudes. This ambiguity may be reduced significantly if the distribution values are restricted to 0 or 1, i.e. when the object of search is an envelope rather than a continuous electron-density distribution. The binarizing in both real (the grid-point density values) and reciprocal (the phases) spaces allows the usual structure-factor equations to be replaced by a system of linear inequalities with binary unknowns. A special computer procedure is applied to obtain several sets of values, which satisfy or almost satisfy these inequalities. The averaging of the found phase sets allows the final map to be calculated. The approach was tested with calculated and experimental data for a known protein structure. The size of the grid for the envelope calculation is at the moment the major limitation of the approach. Nevertheless, even for a very small grid, some structure information can be extracted and used as a starting point for further phase improvement or as a way to solve the molecular replacement problem

Automatic multiple-zone rigid-body refinement with a large convergence radius

Systematic investigation of a large number of trial rigid-body refinements leads to an optimized multiple-zone protocol with a larger convergence radius

Refinamiento de estructuras macromoleculares cristalográficas

Model refinement is a key step in crystallographic structure determination that ensures final atomic structure of macromolecule represents measured diffraction data as good as possible. Several decades have been put into developing methods and computational tools to streamline this step. In this manuscript we provide a brief overview of major milestones of crystallographic computing and methods development pertinent to structure refinement.El refinamiento es un paso clave en el proceso de determinación de una estructura cristalográfica al garantizar que la estructura atómica de la macromolécula final represente de la mejor manera posible los datos de difracción. Han hecho falta varias décadas para poder desarrollar nuevos métodos y herramientas computacionales dirigidas a dinamizar esta etapa. En este artículo ofrecemos un breve resumen de los principales hitos en la computación cristalográfica y de los nuevos métodos relevantes para el refinamiento de estructuras

On macromolecular refinement at subatomic resolution with interatomic scatterers

Modelling deformation electron density using interatomic scatters is simpler than multipolar methods, produces comparable results at subatomic resolution and can easily be applied to macromolecules

Real-space refinement in PHENIX for cryo-EM and crystallography.

This article describes the implementation of real-space refinement in the phenix.real_space_refine program from the PHENIX suite. The use of a simplified refinement target function enables very fast calculation, which in turn makes it possible to identify optimal data-restraint weights as part of routine refinements with little runtime cost. Refinement of atomic models against low-resolution data benefits from the inclusion of as much additional information as is available. In addition to standard restraints on covalent geometry, phenix.real_space_refine makes use of extra information such as secondary-structure and rotamer-specific restraints, as well as restraints or constraints on internal molecular symmetry. The re-refinement of 385 cryo-EM-derived models available in the Protein Data Bank at resolutions of 6 Å or better shows significant improvement of the models and of the fit of these models to the target maps