ABSTRACT
BioSAXS, or X-ray solution scattering as it is sometimes called, is normal transmission SAXS from biological samples, especially proteins, DNA, RNA, or their complexes in solution. What makes it special compared with other SAXS techniques is that special computational methods have been developed to combine information from protein crystallography and NMR with that coming from SAXS so that conformation changes or shapes of complex structures of macromolecules or macromolecule assemblies in solution can be studied. In addition, SAXS can be used as a screening technique to check the quality of biological samples. Two excellent reviews of biological SAXS experiments are those of Putnam et al. [48] and Lipfert and Doniach [59]. The current popularity of bioSAXS can mostly be attributed to the tremendous efforts put into the development of highly automated beamlines dedicated for SAXS measurements of biological samples and further to the development of freely available and highly dedicated software packages for analysis of biological SAXS data.
