A new approach for structure analysis of two-dimensional membrane protein crystals using X-ray powder diffraction data

Abstract

The application of powder diffraction methods to problems in structural biology is generally regarded as intractable because of the large number of unresolved, overlapping X-ray reflections. Here, we use information about unit cell lattice parameters, space group transformations, and chemical composition as a priori information in a bootstrap process that resolves the ambiguities associated with overlapping reflections. The measured ratios of reflections that can be resolved experimentally are used to refine the position, the shape, and the orientation of low-resolution molecular structures within the unit cell, in leading to the resolution of the overlapping reflections. The molecular model..