High-phasing-power lanthanide derivatives: taking advantage of ytterbium and lutetium for optimized anomalous diffraction experiments using synchrotron radiation

Acta Crystallogr D Biol Crystallogr. 2003 Oct;59(Pt 10):1877-80. doi: 10.1107/s0907444903016871. Epub 2003 Sep 19.

Abstract

Ytterbium and lutetium are well suited for optimized anomalous diffraction experiments using synchrotron radiation. Therefore, two lanthanide complexes Yb-HPDO3A and Lu-HPDO3A have been produced that are similar to the Gd-HPDO3A complex already known to give good derivative crystals. Derivative crystals of hen egg-white lysozyme were obtained by co-crystallization using 100 mM solutions of each lanthanide complex. De novo phasing has been carried out using single-wavelength anomalous diffraction on data sets collected on each derivative crystal at the L(III) absorption edge of the corresponding lanthanide (ff" = 28 e(-)). A third data set was collected on a Lu-HPDO3A derivative crystal at the Se K absorption edge with f"(Lu) = 10 e(-). The structures were refined and compared with the known structure of the Gd-HPDO3A lysozyme derivative. The quality of the experimental electron-density maps allows easy model building. With L(III) absorption edges at shorter wavelengths than the gadolinium absorption edge, lutetium and ytterbium, when chelated by a ligand such as HPDO3A, form lanthanide complexes that are especially interesting for synchrotron-radiation experiments in structural biology.

Publication types

  • Comparative Study

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Chickens
  • Crystallization / methods*
  • Crystallography, X-Ray / methods*
  • Crystallography, X-Ray / statistics & numerical data
  • Gadolinium / chemistry
  • Lutetium / chemistry*
  • Muramidase / chemistry
  • Organometallic Compounds / chemistry
  • Sensitivity and Specificity
  • Synchrotrons
  • Ytterbium / chemistry*

Substances

  • Organometallic Compounds
  • Lutetium
  • Gadolinium
  • hen egg lysozyme
  • Muramidase
  • Ytterbium