An improved loopless mounting method for cryocrystallography

Based on a recent loopless mounting method, a simplified loopless and bufferless crystal mounting method is developed for macromolecular crystallography. This simplified crystal mounting system is composed of the following components: a home-made glass capillary, a brass seat for holding the glass capillary, a flow regulator, and a vacuum pump for evacuation. Compared with the currently prevalent loop mounting method, this simplified method has almost the same mounting procedure and thus is compatible with the current automated crystal mounting system. The advantages of this method include higher signal-to-noise ratio, more accurate measurement, more rapid flash cooling, less x-ray absorption and thus less radiation damage to the crystal. This method can be extended to the flash-freeing of a crystal without or with soaking it in a lower concentration of cryoprotectant, thus it may be the best option for data collection in the absence of suitable cryoprotectant. Therefore, it is suggested that this mounting method should be further improved and extensively applied to cryocrystallographic experiments.     

The balance of flexibility and rigidity in the active site residues of hen egg white lysozyme

The crystallographic temperature factors(B factor) of individual atoms contain important information about the thermal motion of the atoms in a macromolecule.Previously the theory of flexibility of active site has been established based on the observation that the enzyme activity is sensitive to low concentration denaturing agents.It has been found that the loss of enzyme activity occurs well before the disruption of the three-dimensional structural scaffold of the enzyme.To test the theory of conformational flexibility of enzyme active site,crystal structures were perturbed by soaking in low concentration guanidine hydrochloride solutions.It was found that many lysozyme crystals tested could still diffract until the concentration of guanidine hydrochloride reached 3 M.It was also found that the B factors averaged over individually collected data sets were more accurate.Thus it suggested that accurate measurement of crystal temperature factors could be achieved for medium-high or even medium resolution crystals by averaging over multiple data sets.Furthermore,we found that the correctly predicted active sites included not only the more flexible residues,but also some more rigid residues.Both the flexible and the rigid residues in the active site played an important role in forming the active site residue network,covering the majority of the substrate binding residues.Therefore,this experimental prediction method may be useful for characterizing the binding site and the function of a protein,such as drug targeting.     

红色核桃仁种皮提取物紫外-可见光谱和质谱分析

采用紫外-可见光谱和高效液相色谱/电喷雾质谱(HPLC-ESI-MSn)联用技术对红色核桃仁种皮提取物进行了初步分析.红色核桃仁种皮的盐酸乙醇提取物在560和591 nm处有2个吸收峰,经过醋酸铅沉淀和薄层层析纯化后在340,370,552和585 nm处有4个吸收峰,说明红色核桃仁种皮中含有花色苷物质,红色核桃仁种皮的盐酸乙醇提取物经HPLC-ESI-MSn(负离子模式扫描)分析后获得m/z为301,481,633,783,785和951等分子离子峰,其对应的物质为鞣花酸、没食子酰基-鞣花酰基葡萄糖、二鞣花酰基葡萄糖、二没食子酰基-鞣花酰基葡萄糖和鞣花酰基-像椀酰基匍萄糖等鞣花单宁.     

核桃仁中多酚类物质的液相/电喷雾质谱分析

利用HPLC-ESI-MSn方法对核桃(Juglans regia L.)仁中多酚类物质组成进行了分析,发现的多酚类物质有鞣花酰基葡萄糖4种异构体、橡椀酰基葡萄糖2种异构体、二鞣花酰基葡萄糖2种异构体、二没食子酰基葡萄糖2种异构体、鞣花酰基和橡椀酰基葡萄糖3种异构体.结果表明,采用HPLC-ESI-MSn方法可以对核桃仁中多酚类物质进行有效的分析.