Dear Eike, The fact that the crystal is hollow, won’t ruin your diffraction, as long as the crystal remains rigid. However, when the crystal is flexible and collapses during mounting and freezing, you are in trouble. Against the good practice, I would in this case try a big loop and scoop the crystal with a lot of mother liquor, so the crystal is completely surrounded by mother liquor during freezing. You may get more background this way, but it might save your diffraction.
A hollow crystal means that protein around the growing seed gets depleted, so you may try to slow down the crystal growth, e.g. by using a lower precipitant concentration, maybe in combination with seeding to go to a region in the phase-diagram where you only have crystal growth, but no nucleation. Best, Herman Von: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK] Im Auftrag von Schulz, Eike-Christian Gesendet: Mittwoch, 30. November 2016 08:20 An: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Betreff: [ccp4bb] structure determination from a hollow crystal Dear all, Is there a documented case of a structure determination from a hollow crystal? We have the unfortunate situation that a protein only crystallizes as a hollow tube, where the inside is filled with solvent, which ruins the diffraction patterns. I was often confronted with similar situations, but in the previous cases I could always find a suitable crystal (part) or a different crystallization condition saved me. If anybody had general advise on how to proceed or could point me to relevant literature it would be much appreciated. With best regards Eike
