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X-ray crystallography

One size fits most

Nature volume 495, pages 456–457 (2013)Cite this article

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Crystalline 'sponges' offer a way to impose order on small molecules so that their structures can be solved by X-ray crystallography. This enables nanogram quantities of material to be analysed using the technique. See Article p.461

Much of science involves describing things that we cannot see, and no method has revealed more about the hidden world of molecular structures than X-ray crystallography1. But the sample preparation required for this technique can be difficult, especially when only small quantities of a compound are available. On page 461 of this issue, Inokuma et al.2 report an approach that can overcome this problem, greatly increasing the technique's applicability.

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Figure 1: Order imposed by a framework.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pierre Stallforth and Jon Clardy are in the Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.,

    Pierre Stallforth & Jon Clardy

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  1. Pierre Stallforth
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  2. Jon Clardy
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Correspondence to Jon Clardy.

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Stallforth, P., Clardy, J. One size fits most. Nature 495, 456–457 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/495456a

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