Protein structure determination has benefited significantly from the focus on high throughput methods required by the NIH Protein Structure Initiative (PSI). As part of our efforts related to PSI activities, we have established a state-of-the-art X-ray diffraction facility at the University of Georgia (UGA) with a design goal of providing X-ray characterization (cell constants and diffraction limit) for at least 100 protein crystals per day. In addition, a novel parameter space screening approach for optimizing the phasing and structure determination process has been developed at UGA, which dramatically speeds up the structure determination process. Together these components form an extremely efficient and versatile structure determination pipeline.
The system described above has been used for de novo structure determination associated with ongoing structural genomics activities, including the determination of three structures in four days from crystals briefly soaked in gold and mercury solutions.