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MAD phasing grows up

Abstract

Multiwavelength anomalous diffraction (MAD) phasing, which relies on synchrotron radiation, has grown from a novelty technique to a mainstream method that has been used to determine macromolecule structures of up to 200,000 Mr.

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Figure 1: Anomalous scattering curves from a crystal of human chorionic gonadotropin containing selenomethionine16.
Figure 2: a, Plot of the number of published structures solved using MAD data versus the year. The number of structures for 1998 is counted through early May of this year.

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Acknowledgements

I thank W. Hendrickson for numerous contributions, Y. Liu for sharing results and Fig. 1, and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the staff of X4A for support and development of Beamline X4A at the NSLS.

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Ogata, C. MAD phasing grows up. Nat Struct Mol Biol 5 (Suppl 8), 638–640 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/1330

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