Hence, the understanding of such processes as enzyme catalysis and the mechanics of the transfer of hereditary information relies on obtaining an image in three dimensions of these molecules. A wide range of experimental and theoretical skills are applied from chemistry as well as physics, mathematics and molecular biology. The results obtained are finding wide reaching applications in pharmaceutical design and biotechnology.
Crystallisation is a critical step.
A crystallisation laboratory is available in the Department for growth of crystals of proteins and nucleic acids. Single crystals of the enzymes trypanothione reductase and zinc aldolase and the sugar binding protein concanavalin-A as well as various nucleotides have been grown in this laboratory and the structure analyses of these molecules are underway. Data collection is done within the Department on a rotating anode source equipped with a Rigaku diffractometer and an image plate area detector and also on the instruments, based on the wiggler and a bending magnet, at the Daresbury Synchrotron Radiation Source at nearby Warrington. Digitisation of Laue film data is done on our in-house microdensitometer. Electron density maps are calculated from the diffraction data.