[ccp4bb]: dehydration

["K. Christopher Garcia" <kcgarcia@leland.stanford.edu>]

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I had one dramatic success with transfer of a crystal to higher PEG, 
resulting in an improvement of better than 2Å resolution from the 
previous data.  However, this has only happened once from a dataset 
now of over 20 other crystals where this has not helped or has made 
matters worse.  In fact, dehydration can worsen mosaicity and 
anisotropy through uneven compression of the lattice.  As with other 
things such as "crystal annealing", etc., it is always worth a try 
but the odds are it will not be a magic bullet and the problem will 
have to be solved with a more robust, back-to-square-one approach.


-- 

K. Christopher Garcia, Ph.D
Stanford University School of Medicine
Dept. of Microbiology and Immunology
Fairchild D319
299 Campus Drive
Stanford, CA  94305-5124

tel# 650-498-7332 (office)
tel# 650-498-7111 (lab)
fax# 650-725-6757

e-mail:  kcgarcia@stanford.edu