J. Appl. Cryst.の発刊に際して
10 Mar 1970-Vol. 12, Iss: 1, pp 1-1
About: The article was published on 1970-03-10 and is currently open access. It has received 8159 citations till now.
Citations
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TL;DR: This is the first analysis of the structural basis for activation of l-nucleoside analogs, providing further impetus for discovery and clinical development of new agents in this molecular class.
Abstract: L-nucleoside analogs represent an important class of small molecules for treating both viral infections and cancers. These pro-drugs achieve pharmacological activity only after enzyme-catalyzed conversion to their tri-phosphorylated forms. Herein, we report the crystal structures of human deoxycytidine kinase (dCK) in complex with the L-nucleosides (-)-b-2 0 ,3 0 -dideoxy-3 0 -thiacytidine (3TC)—an approved anti-human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) agent—and troxacitabine (TRO)—an experimental anti-neoplastic agent. The first step in activating these agents is catalyzed by dCK. Our studies reveal how dCK, which normally catalyzes phosphorylation of the natural D-nucleosides, can efficiently phosphorylate substrates with non-physiologic chirality. The capability of dCK to phosphorylate both D- and L-nucleosides and nucleoside analogs derives from structural properties of both the enzyme and the substrates themselves. First, the nucleoside-binding site tolerates substrates with different chiral configurations by maintaining virtually all of the protein-ligand interactions responsible for productive substrate positioning. Second, the pseudo-symmetry of nucleosides and nucleoside analogs in combination with their conformational flexibility allows the L- and D-enantiomeric forms to adopt similar shapes when bound to the enzyme. This is the first analysis of the structural basis for activation of L-nucleoside analogs, providing further impetus for discovery and clinical development of new agents in this molecular class.
48 citations
TL;DR: The crystal structure of the dodecamer, d(CGCIAATTCGCG), has been determined at 2.4 A resolution by molecular replacement, and refined to an R-factor of 0.174, which indicates the presence of inosine instead of guanine.
Abstract: The crystal structure of the dodecamer, d(CGCIAATTCGCG), has been determined at 2.4 A resolution by molecular replacement, and refined to an R-factor of 0.174. The structure is isomorphous with that of the B-DNA dodecamer, d(CGCGAATTCGCG), in space group P2(1)2(1)2(1) with cell dimensions of a = 24.9, b = 40.4, and c = 66.4 A. The initial difference Fourier maps clearly indicated the presence of inosine instead of guanine. The structure was refined with 44 water molecules, and compared to the parent dodecamer. Overall the two structures are very similar, and the I:C forms Watson-Crick base pairs with similar hydrogen bond geometry to the G:C base pairs. The propeller twist angle is low for I4:C21 and relatively high for the I16:C9 base pair (-3.2 degrees compared to -23.0 degrees), and the buckle angles alter, probably due to differences in the contacts with symmetry related molecules in the crystal lattice. The central base pairs of d(CGCIAATTCGCG) show the large propeller twist angles, and the narrow minor groove that characterize A-tract DNA, although I:C base pairs cannot form the major groove bifurcated hydrogen bonds that are possible for A:T base pairs.
48 citations
01 Feb 2017
TL;DR: This article addresses many of the typical difficulties that a structural biologist may face when dealing with carbohydrates, with an emphasis on problem solving in the resolution range where X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy are expected to overlap in the next decade.
Abstract: Sugars are the most stereochemically intricate family of biomolecules and present substantial challenges to anyone trying to understand their nomenclature, reactions or branched structures. Current crystallographic programs provide an abstraction layer allowing inexpert structural biologists to build complete protein or nucleic acid model components automatically either from scratch or with little manual intervention. This is, however, still not generally true for sugars. The need for carbohydrate-specific building and validation tools has been highlighted a number of times in the past, concomitantly with the introduction of a new generation of experimental methods that have been ramping up the production of protein–sugar complexes and glycoproteins for the past decade. While some incipient advances have been made to address these demands, correctly modelling and refining carbohydrates remains a challenge. This article will address many of the typical difficulties that a structural biologist may face when dealing with carbohydrates, with an emphasis on problem solving in the resolution range where X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy are expected to overlap in the next decade.
48 citations
Cites methods from "J. Appl. Cryst.の発刊に際して"
...ACEDRG (Long et al., 2017) is a new CCP4 tool that has been designed to fulfil a twofold purpose: mining structural resources such as, but not restricted to, the Crystallography Open Database (COD; Gražulis et al., 2009, 2012), and creating dictionaries using knowledge derived from these resources....
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TL;DR: A fitness model (energy storage density) that includes the dielectric constant, bandgap, and intrinsic breakdown field is proposed that efficiently leads to practically important results and opens up a new avenue for discovering novel high-k dielectrics with both fixed and variable compositions.
Abstract: High-k dielectric materials are important as gate oxides in microelectronics and as potential dielectrics for capacitors. In order to enable computational discovery of novel high-k dielectric materials, we propose a fitness model (energy storage density) that includes the dielectric constant, bandgap, and intrinsic breakdown field. This model, used as a fitness function in conjunction with first-principles calculations and the global optimization evolutionary algorithm USPEX, efficiently leads to practically important results. We found a number of high-fitness structures of SiO2 and HfO2, some of which correspond to known phases and some of which are new. The results allow us to propose characteristics (genes) common to high-fitness structures – these are the coordination polyhedra and their degree of distortion. Our variable-composition searches in the HfO2–SiO2 system uncovered several high-fitness states. This hybrid algorithm opens up a new avenue for discovering novel high-k dielectrics with both fixed and variable compositions, and will speed up the process of materials discovery.
47 citations
Cites background or methods from "J. Appl. Cryst.の発刊に際して"
...The structures were visualized using VESTA (Momma & Izumi, 2011)....
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...Services for accessing these data are described at the back of the journal....
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TL;DR: Thoughts about the decisions made in designing macromolecular X-ray crystallography experiments at synchrotron beamlines are presented.
Abstract: The measurement of X-ray diffraction data from macromolecular crystals for the purpose of structure determination is the convergence of two processes: the preparation of diffraction-quality crystal samples on the one hand and the construction and optimization of an X-ray beamline and end station on the other. Like sample preparation, a macromolecular crystallography beamline is geared to obtaining the best possible diffraction measurements from crystals provided by the synchrotron user. This paper describes the thoughts behind an experiment that fully exploits both the sample and the beamline and how these map into everyday decisions that users can and should make when visiting a beamline with their most precious crystals.
47 citations
Cites background from "J. Appl. Cryst.の発刊に際して"
...Moreover, the quality of the sample mount can have a direct bearing on data quality and attention should be paid to this by the user (Alkire et al., 2008; Flot et al., 2006)....
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...D67, 261–270 Evans et al. Design of diffraction experiments 263 describe some good practice that can improve the final results obtained from the experiment....
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References
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TL;DR: The goals of the PDB are described, the systems in place for data deposition and access, how to obtain further information and plans for the future development of the resource are described.
Abstract: The Protein Data Bank (PDB; http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/ ) is the single worldwide archive of structural data of biological macromolecules. This paper describes the goals of the PDB, the systems in place for data deposition and access, how to obtain further information, and near-term plans for the future development of the resource.
34,239 citations
TL;DR: New features added to the refinement program SHELXL since 2008 are described and explained.
Abstract: The improvements in the crystal structure refinement program SHELXL have been closely coupled with the development and increasing importance of the CIF (Crystallographic Information Framework) format for validating and archiving crystal structures. An important simplification is that now only one file in CIF format (for convenience, referred to simply as `a CIF') containing embedded reflection data and SHELXL instructions is needed for a complete structure archive; the program SHREDCIF can be used to extract the .hkl and .ins files required for further refinement with SHELXL. Recent developments in SHELXL facilitate refinement against neutron diffraction data, the treatment of H atoms, the determination of absolute structure, the input of partial structure factors and the refinement of twinned and disordered structures. SHELXL is available free to academics for the Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems, and is particularly suitable for multiple-core processors.
28,425 citations
TL;DR: CCP4mg is a project that aims to provide a general-purpose tool for structural biologists, providing tools for X-ray structure solution, structure comparison and analysis, and publication-quality graphics.
Abstract: CCP4mg is a project that aims to provide a general-purpose tool for structural biologists, providing tools for X-ray structure solution, structure comparison and analysis, and publication-quality graphics. The map-fitting tools are available as a stand-alone package, distributed as `Coot'.
27,505 citations
TL;DR: The PHENIX software for macromolecular structure determination is described and its uses and benefits are described.
Abstract: Macromolecular X-ray crystallography is routinely applied to understand biological processes at a molecular level. However, significant time and effort are still required to solve and complete many of these structures because of the need for manual interpretation of complex numerical data using many software packages and the repeated use of interactive three-dimensional graphics. PHENIX has been developed to provide a comprehensive system for macromolecular crystallographic structure solution with an emphasis on the automation of all procedures. This has relied on the development of algorithms that minimize or eliminate subjective input, the development of algorithms that automate procedures that are traditionally performed by hand and, finally, the development of a framework that allows a tight integration between the algorithms.
18,531 citations
TL;DR: A description is given of Phaser-2.1: software for phasing macromolecular crystal structures by molecular replacement and single-wavelength anomalous dispersion phasing.
Abstract: Phaser is a program for phasing macromolecular crystal structures by both molecular replacement and experimental phasing methods. The novel phasing algorithms implemented in Phaser have been developed using maximum likelihood and multivariate statistics. For molecular replacement, the new algorithms have proved to be significantly better than traditional methods in discriminating correct solutions from noise, and for single-wavelength anomalous dispersion experimental phasing, the new algorithms, which account for correlations between F+ and F−, give better phases (lower mean phase error with respect to the phases given by the refined structure) than those that use mean F and anomalous differences ΔF. One of the design concepts of Phaser was that it be capable of a high degree of automation. To this end, Phaser (written in C++) can be called directly from Python, although it can also be called using traditional CCP4 keyword-style input. Phaser is a platform for future development of improved phasing methods and their release, including source code, to the crystallographic community.
17,755 citations