Dear Andre, Yes, hollow crystals are not very uncommon. We have recently also solved a structure at very high resolution using long hollow crystals. Initially the walls were very thin; we managed to make them thicker (and the hole correspondingly smaller) by standard fine-tuning of conditions. I didn't see any "special" effects arising from the hollowness. We just got higher resolution as we got more material to fill in some of the hole.
Saridakis E; Giastas P; Efthymiou G; Thoma V; Moulis J-M; Kyritsis P; Mavridis I. M J Biol.Inorg. Chem. 2009;14(5):783-99. Best, Emmanuel ----- Original Message ----- From: Andre Ambrosio To: CCP4BB@JISCMAIL.AC.UK Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2010 10:07 PM Subject: [ccp4bb] Off-topic: hollow protein crystals Dear all, We have recently obtained crystals from a small protein, and interestingly, at least for me, they are hollow trigonal rods (please see pictures attached). Just out of curiosity, has anybody ever seen such feature for protein crystals before? Regards, -Andre.
