BMB 611 Advanced X-ray Diffraction Methods

Course Director:     Greg Van Duyne

                              809B Stellar-Chance

                              vanduyne@mail.med.upenn.edu

MW, 3:00-4:30, in 255 Anatomy-Chemistry Building

Schedule and Course Topics

Overview of the course; reference texts

Crystallization strategies & methods

Data collection; sample mounting, sources, & detectors

Data processing; integration, scaling, merging

Workshop; data collection and processing

Crystallographic data; coordinates, reflections, maps, transformations, etc.

Molecular replacement

Heavy atom derivatives; preparation of derivatives, scaling data

Finding sites; Patterson and direct methods

Heavy atom refinement and phasing

Anomalous scattering; multwavelength phasing

Electron density modification; averaging, solvent flattening

Fitting electron density maps

Workshop; electron density maps

Crystallographic refinement

Crystallographic results; analysis, drawings, databases

The emphasis of this course will be on experimental and computational methods, with very little review of basic protein crystallography.  There will be occasional assignments to be done outside of class, which will require that you have access to a laptop or desktop computer where you can install a suite of crystallographic software. Grades for this course will be based entirely on the assignments.

Knowledge of basic crystallography at the level of BMB554/CHEM555 will be assumed throughout this course.