Protein crystals can be incommensurately modulated
Modulated crystals result in diffraction patterns consisting of main reflections surrounded by satellite reflections. These patterns are typically encountered in small-molecule structures at the interface of a phase transition. If the modulation is incommensurate then the satellite reflections cannot be predicted with a supercell. In these cases a superspace indexing approach is used to index the reflections. We report a successful superspace indexing of an incommensurately modulated crystal of profilin:actin. In this case the modulation is induced with a pH change.
Jeffrey J. Lovelace, Cameron R. Murphy, Lee Daniels, Kartik Narayan, Clarence E. Schutt, Uno Lindberg, Christer Svensson and Gloria E.O. Borgstahl
![[Incommensurately modulated protein crystal]](https://www.iucr.org/__data/assets/image/0018/16137/16_3_AS_img_15.jpg)
Incommensurately modulated PA crystal with main reflections indexed and predicted (blue circles) with space group P222, a = 38.1, b = 72.3, c = 185.7 Å and showing satellite reflections in one modulation direction indexed as q = 0.29b*.
