ABSTRACT
The explosive growth of genomic information in recent decades has stimulated demand for structures at the molecular scale and driven many technical developments in protein crystallography at synchrotron sources worldwide. Despite improving protein expression and purification techniques, many important targets of study, such as membrane proteins and large multicomponent complexes, can only be isolated in small quantities and only yield tiny crystals, if any. A number of X-ray-focusing schemes have been developed to deliver more photons to smaller samples, thus boosting observable diffraction signals. Single-bounce monocapillary optics are glass tubes having elliptical or parabolic internal surface profiles which, at grazing incidence angles, focus X-rays via total external reflection. Profiles optimized for particular source characteristics and application requirements can be readily produced through a precisely controlled glass drawing process. Focusing optics of this Synchrotron Radiation and Structural Proteomics Edited by Eugenia Pechkova and Christian Riekel Copyright © 2012 Pan Stanford Publishing Pte. Ltd. www.panstanford.com
kind have been used with success in protein crystallography and small-angle solution scattering, but their use also extends to other areas of growing interest to biologists such as fluorescence mapping scans for metals in tissue, X-ray microscopy, and grazing incidence small-angle scattering.
