Synchrotron radiation and bio-crystallography

The last decade has witnessed the development of new methodologies in molecular biology and biochemistrywhich, together with thewidespread availability of computing power for fast calculation and graphics, have supported the striking growth of crystallographic studies of biological relevance. This surge in newmethodologies experienced by macromolecular crystallography has been largely fuelled by developments in structural genomics and by the needs of the pharmaceutical industry. A key contribution to such rapid growth was certainly provided by the increased access to synchrotron sources, which resulted in new ways of collecting X-ray diffraction data and allowed novel structure determination techniques, otherwise not possible on conventional X-ray sources.Open access to synchrotron sources, together with the use of efficient X-ray detectors, is probably the fundamental reason of the exponential growth of structural biology studies during the last 15 years. The next paragraphs cover some general aspects and select recent advances in macromolecular crystallography, focussing especially on synchrotron radiation applications.