issue contents
August 2016 issue

Cover illustration: RoboDiff - a new sample changer deployed at the ESRF beamline MASSIF-1 (ID30A-1), based on an industrial six-axis robot (Nurizzo et al., p. 966). RoboDiff includes a high-capacity dewar, acts as both a sample changer and a high-accuracy goniometer, and has been designed for completely unattended sample mounting and diffraction data collection.
research papers
The 2.4 Å resolution crystal structure of human mitochondrial TRAP1NM is reported, which together with epitope-mapping results supports a role for the M-domain in mediating the specific interaction with mitochondrial Hsp70 that is required for TRAP1-dependent protein folding.
PDB reference: human mitochondrial TRAP1NM, 5hph
GTP-specific succinyl-CoA synthetase has been crystallized with CoA, magnesium and succinate to determine the binding site of the substrate succinate.
PDB reference: succinyl-CoA synthetase, 5cae
The three-dimensional structure and the structure–function relationship of the photoconvertible fluorescent protein DendFP from Dendronephthya sp. are reported.
The structure of a periplasmic phosphate-binding protein from S. maltophilia has been determined at 1.1 Å resolution. The protein crystallized as an impurity, which was eventually identified by a PDB-wide molecular-replacement search followed by refinement at atomic resolution.
PDB reference: periplasmic phosphate-binding protein, 5jk4
A sample-delivery system featuring high hit rates, low background and minimal sample requirements is presented for serial crystallography at XFELs and synchrotrons.
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A novel indexing method is presented that is well suited to the minimal information on a still image diffraction pattern and can achieve indexing rates of over one lattice per image.
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An industrial six-axis robot has been combined with a high-accuracy air-bearing rotation axis to create a single device with the capabilities of both transferring cryocooled protein crystals from a sample-containing dewar and collecting complete X-ray diffraction data sets.
The extended substrate spectrum conferred by the increased flexibility of the R2 loop and the inhibition activity of citrate towards the class C β-lactamases AmpC BER and CMY-10 is reported.