Content

Protein structures are the basis for the understanding of protein function at a molecular level. X-Ray protein crystallography is the oldest and most established method to gain these information. Beside understanding the mechanism of enzyme function, determination of protein complexes are more and more important. Crystal structures are often also the basis for solving higher molecular complexes determined by CryoEM.

In this course we focus on the structural biology in general and how we can obtain these structures using protein crystallography. We will also discuss protein structure pediction using alphafold and its strength and weaknesses. After the course yous should be comfortable to interpret structure found in the literature, viewing and manipulating it with and moleculare visualisation programm, jduge the quality of protein crystal structures and implement alphafold predictions meaningfully into your future work.

 

Main methodology

• Visualisation and analysis of protein structures
• Crystallographic foundations: crystal geometry, symmetries, theory and practice of X-ray diffraction 
• Crystallization experiments on biological macromolecules
• Crystallographic data collection and analysis
• Approaches for solving the phase problem 
• Structure building and refinement
• Validation and quality assessment
• Protein modelling