REFINEMENT OF THE STRUCTURE OF DESPENTAPEPTIDE (B26—30) INSULIN AT 1.5 RESOLUTION

The refinement of the structure of despentapeptide (B26-20) insulin (DPI) at 1.5 Aresolution is described in the present paper. Against the X-ray diffraction data of newlygrown crystals, the restrained parameter least-squares refinement of the structure alter-nated with model-rebuilding. The original 2.4A resolution model has been thoroughlyrefined and parts of it have been eonsiderably revised. The cadmium coordination struc-ture has been well determined, and appears to be a nearly ideal octahedron. After refine-ment 84 water oxygen atoms have been included in the final model; this gives us detailedinformation for studies on the water structure in the DPI crystal. The final crystal-lographic reliability index R value was 0.144 for 5678 unique observable reflexions (F_o great-er than 1.5σ (F_o)) in the 10-1.5A range; the refined model has a root-mean-squaredeviation from standard bond lengths of 0.04A.