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Energy dependence of site-specific radiation damage in protein crystals.

ABSTRACT: It is important to consider radiation damage to crystals caused by data collection when solving structures and critical when determining protein function, which can often depend on very subtle structural characteristics. In this study the rate of damage to specific sites in protein crystals cooled at 100 K is found to depend on the energy of the incident X-ray beam. Several lysozyme crystals were each subjected to 3-26 MGy of cumulative X-ray exposure by collecting multiple data sets from each crystal at either 9 keV or 14 keV. The integrated electron density surrounding each S atom in the structure was calculated for each data set and the change in electron density was evaluated as a function of dose at the two energies. The rate of electron density decrease per cubic Å per MGy was determined to be greater at 14 keV than at 9 keV for cysteine sulfurs involved in disulphide bridges; no statistically significant differences in the decay rates were found for methionine sulfurs. These preliminary results imply that it might be possible to minimize certain types of specific radiation damage by an appropriate choice of energy. Further experiments studying a variety of photolabile sites over a wider range of energies are needed to confirm this conclusion.

SUBMITTER: Homer C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3083911 | biostudies-literature | 2011 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Energy dependence of site-specific radiation damage in protein crystals.

Homer Christina C Cooper Laura L Gonzalez Ana A

Journal of synchrotron radiation 20110315 Pt 3

It is important to consider radiation damage to crystals caused by data collection when solving structures and critical when determining protein function, which can often depend on very subtle structural characteristics. In this study the rate of damage to specific sites in protein crystals cooled at 100 K is found to depend on the energy of the incident X-ray beam. Several lysozyme crystals were each subjected to 3-26 MGy of cumulative X-ray exposure by collecting multiple data sets from each c ...[more]

PMID: 21525641

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Project description:The local Fourier-space relation between diffracted intensity I, diffraction wavevector q and dose D, , is key to probing and understanding radiation damage by X-rays and energetic particles in both diffraction and imaging experiments. The models used in protein crystallography for the last 50 years provide good fits to experimental I(q) versus nominal dose data, but have unclear physical significance. More recently, a fit to diffraction and imaging experiments suggested that the maximum tolerable dose varies as q -1 or linearly with resolution. Here, it is shown that crystallographic data have been strongly perturbed by the effects of spatially nonuniform crystal irradiation and diffraction during data collection. Reanalysis shows that these data are consistent with a purely exponential local dose dependence, = I 0(q)exp[-D/D e(q)], where D e(q) ? q ? with ? ? 1.7. A physics-based model for radiation damage, in which damage events occurring at random locations within a sample each cause energy deposition and blurring of the electron density within a small volume, predicts this exponential variation with dose for all q values and a decay exponent ? ? 2 in two and three dimensions, roughly consistent with both diffraction and imaging experiments over more than two orders of magnitude in resolution. The B-factor model used to account for radiation damage in crystallographic scaling programs is consistent with ? = 2, but may not accurately capture the dose dependencies of structure factors under typical nonuniform illumination conditions. The strong q dependence of radiation-induced diffraction decays implies that the previously proposed 20-30?MGy dose limit for protein crystallography should be replaced by a resolution-dependent dose limit that, for atomic resolution data sets, will be much smaller. The results suggest that the physics underlying basic experimental trends in radiation damage at T ? 100?K is straightforward and universal. Deviations of the local I(q, D) from strictly exponential behavior may provide mechanistic insights, especially into the radiation-damage processes responsible for the greatly increased radiation sensitivity observed at T ? 300?K.

Dataset Information

Energy dependence of site-specific radiation damage in protein crystals.

Publications

Energy dependence of site-specific radiation damage in protein crystals.

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