Chapter 7: Protein Crystallography for Metalloproteins

The structures of proteins are very essential in understanding the functions of proteins. Protein crystallography is the most wide-used and precious method for structure determination of proteins. This chapter, Protein crystallography for metalloproteins, is divided into four sections. Firstly, we introduce protein crystallography by comparing with other methods for obtaining structure, such as NMR and cryo-EM. And then the general routine for getting structures via crystallography is described, especially the phasing problem in protein structure determination. In Section 3, the most favorite phasing method, MAD, which is suitable for metallloproteins, is presented. Finally, we demonstrate one case of investigating the function of metalloprotein by obtaining the structure.