Now that there is possibility that images could be fake, which means the first and automatic FFT in crystallography could be falsified. All those depositions later than this would be just nothing but wrong, if images were fake. To keep the first and most important FFT not contaminated, I would suggest the deposition of crystals.
0) Crystal is harder to be fake than images; From crystal to images, maybe only 1 hour needed; 1) Protein crystals could be stored in LN2 for probably more than 1000 years; 2) There normally are small and not a big space occupier; 3) They can be easily maintained by simply feed LN2 and controled by computer; 4) You do not need buy hard drives, DVDs, .. and no need in suffering from different format of files, ... 5) Crystallography keeps moving forward though slow. It is possible that future people can get better data from the almost same crystal, better than using softwares to deal with images, ... 6) Temporarily I suggest the generous 3rd generation synchrotron facilities round out some space for saving those crystals, because there are normally located far from downtown and have enough land around... 7) ... Lijun > Kay Diederichs wrote: > >>In this case the structure factors were deposited, but these do not >>have a column for the anomalous signal. Re-refinement with these >>structure factors was inconclusive. >> >>If I could have downloaded the images, I could have investigated >>this easily, because there's a large difference in the f" of those >>two metals. >> >>So to me access to images sometimes may help to answer a scientific >> question. > > > I would add a plea to those considering an image deposition system: > accept MAPS too! > > At the very least it would be nice to see the initial and final maps > the crystallographer used. Even if I have the structure factors I'm > not necessarily an expert on the ins and outs of what someone had to > do to refine a twinned or otherwise troublesome structure, and I > don't want to have to learn the specific refinement program you used > to be able to reproduce the exact map you saw. (For very old > structures, it may no longer be possible to compile the specific > version of the refinement software on new processors/OSes, or someone > may have used a commercial refinement package.) And of course, there > are non-crystallographers who use structures and it is absurd to > expect them to learn x-ray refinement to see the relevant map for a > twinned structure that EDS couldn't process. > > I love EDS. But even though it usually has a map for a given > structure, seeing the actual map generated by the crystallographer > who was the expert on the project would be better. Once a system is > designed that is large enough to handle images, maps would not > significantly increase the required storage space. I've poked a > couple people to suggest that even now the PDB ought to be accepting > maps. > > > -- > -Eric >
