Speaker
Mr
Soren Midtgaard
(University og Copenhagen)
Description
Structural knowledge of membrane proteins is paramount to the understanding of a wide range of questions in life science. In recent years, a number of alternatives to traditional crystallization have emerged, among them the use of various lipid:protein particles in connection with small-angle scattering, and direct methods like Cryo-EM. Commonly for all of these techniques is that the molecules or particles used to screen the hydrophobic membrane spanning region from the solvent are highly visible in the data and as such complicates the data analysis significantly.
Here, a new approach is presented using match-out deuterated analogues of commonly used membrane protein storage detergents in combination with SANS. Resent results on a wide variety of different membrane proteins are presented. This method does not rely on the expensive and time-consuming approach of producing perdeuterated membrane proteins or deuterated lipids *in vivo*. Furthermore, as many membrane protein structures based on crystallography are of medium resolution at best, the resolution obtainable by using SANS can be very useful.
In the future, this technique will be very applicable at facilities like ESS as the high flux and time-of-flight can be utilized to obtain good data on small unstable samples.
Primary author
Mr
Soren Midtgaard
(University og Copenhagen)
