Macromolecular Serial Crystallography

Dear Colleagues,

Within the structural biology field, X-ray crystallography prevails as the dominant technique to determine the structures of macromolecules, producing more than one hundred thousand structures since its inception. New technologies developed such as X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) and their implementation in the field of serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) has opened up a new era in structural biology. SFX relies on exceptionally bright, micro-focused, and ultra-short X-ray beam pulses used to probe nano/micrometer-sized crystals in a serial fashion at room temperature, resulting in data sets comprised of individual snapshots. As a result, the field is quickly expanding and allowing structural biologists access to previously restricted scientific areas. This emerging field has also cultivated new methods for crystallization, and assessment of nano/microcrystals, sample delivery, and data processing. In addition to its use in XFELs, the serial synchrotron crystallography (SSX) approach is currently experiencing rapid growth and maturing as a routine. Third-generation synchrotron sources, being equipped with beamlines using sophisticated focusing optics, submicron beam diameters, and fast low-noise photon-counting detectors, offer tremendous complementarity to XFELs for structural biology studies.

The main goal of this Special Issue on “Macromolecular Serial Crystallography” will be to gather research manuscripts from experts in the filed (chemists, biologists, physicists, and structural biologists) to create an international platform to provide rich reference information on the latest advances and exciting discoveries in the still emerging technology of serial crystallography in XFELs and synchrotron radiation sources.

Dr. José Manuel Martín-García
Dr. Shibom Basu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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