title: Nucleic acid X-ray crystallography via direct selenium derivatization.
abstract: X-ray crystallography has proven to be an essential tool for structural studies of bio-macromolecules at the atomic level. There are two major bottle-neck problems in the macromolecular crystal structure determination: phasing and crystallization. Although the selenium derivatization is routinely used for solving novel protein structures through the MAD phasing technique, the phase problem is still a critical issue in nucleic acid crystallography. The background and current progress of using direct selenium-derivatization of nucleic acids (SeNA) to solve the phase problem and to facilitate nucleic acid crystallization for X-ray crystallography are summarized in this tutorial review.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
authors.forename: Lina
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Jia
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Sheng
authors.forename: Zhen
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Huang
mesh_terms: D018360:Crystallography, X-Ray / Q000379:methods*; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D009696:Nucleic Acids / Q000737:chemistry*; D012643:Selenium / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D009696:Nucleic Acids; D012643:Selenium