X-ray crystallography provides us the most powerful and accurate method to determine the three dimensional structures of proteins and protein-ligand complexes and to reveal the structural basis of protein functions, the detail interactions between proteins and their binding partners, and the mechanisms of their actions. The following shows the procedure for protein crystallographic study, from molecular cloning to protein structure analysis:

Learning crystallography from the Internet:

• Crystallography 101 (LLNL-BBRP): ruppweb.dyndns.org
• Crystallization 101 (Hampton Research): www.hamptonresearch.com/support/cg101.html
• Education at American Crystallographic Association: www.hwi.buffalo.edu/ACA/CrystalEducationSites.html
• Synchrotron facility at APS: www.aps.anl.gov/
• Data processing with HKL (www.hkl-xray.com/)
• SOLVE/RESOLVE (Automated crystallographic structure solution) www.solve.lanl.gov/index.html
• Model building with O (www.bioxray.dk/~mok/o-files.html)
• Crystallography & NMR System for macromolecular structure determination cns.csb.yale.edu/v1.0/
• Crystallographic programs in CCP4 (www.ccp4.ac.uk/)
• 3-D biological macromolecular structure data at PDB (www.rcsb.org/pdb/)