X-ray crystallography

Also known as X-ray scattering techniques

technique used for determining the atomic or molecular structure of a crystal, in which the ordered atoms cause a beam of incident X-rays to diffract into specific directions

AI overview

X-ray crystallography is a technique that uses X-rays to determine the precise atomic and molecular structure of crystals by observing how the X-rays bounce off the ordered atoms inside them. This method matters because understanding the detailed structure of materials at the atomic level is essential for fields like medicine, materials science, and chemistry, enabling scientists to design better drugs, materials, and understand how substances work.

AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.

Research

118,822 papers

Protein X-ray Crystallography and Drug Discovery.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2020
X-ray crystallography shines a light on pore-forming toxins.Methods in enzymology · 2021
X-Ray Crystallography in Structure-Function Characterization of Therapeutic Enzymes.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2019
Protein Structure Analysis and Validation with X-Ray Crystallography.Methods in molecular biology (Clifton, N.J.) · 2021
General Strategies for RNA X-ray Crystallography.Molecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023

via PubMed

~40 min read

Encyclopedic overview

A powder X-ray diffractometer in motion

X-ray crystallography is the experimental science of determining the atomic and molecular structure of a crystal, in which the structure causes a beam of incident X-rays to diffract in specific directions. By measuring the angles and intensities of the X-ray diffraction, a crystallographer can produce a three-dimensional picture of the density of electrons within the crystal and the positions of the atoms, as well as their chemical bonds, crystallographic disorder, and other information.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “X-ray crystallography” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.