Dear Jacob, Your approach I think it is a sound one for exploring how to gain a significant potential improvement by harnessing the diffuse diffraction, which looks rich and varied in many cases ie must surely contain good structural information. The separation of the various experimental and crystal (imperfection) features is a part of moving towards such a quantitative analysis.
The diffuse scattering interpretation past examples have involved modelling eg from subjectively obvious looking protein domains and hinge rotation possibilities for example. A more objective approach woulod be to combine the Bragg-derived-protein-structure with molecular dynamics (MD) simulations ie which may then explain in part the observed diffuse X-ray scattering, mainly but not exclusively between the Bragg peaks. Such MD simulations to my mind have improved a lot with the compute power readily available, either to extend the length of time of the simulations or initiate from multiple starting points (eg temperatures) to assess sensible time-evolutions of the structure. On getting funded:- Falling between two funding Agencies is a universal challenge, not only USA. I cannot guarantee success but one approach here in UK is to contact both likely Agencies' relevant Programme Managers and initiate a three way e-discussion. After all they can contemplate sharing the cost! Good luck, Best wishes, John Prof John R Helliwell On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 5:47 PM, Jacob Keller <j-kell...@md.northwestern.edu > wrote: > Dear Crystallographers, > > One can see from many posts on this listserve that in any given x-ray > diffraction experiment, there are more data than merely the diffraction > spots. Given that we now have vastly increased computational power and data > storage capability, does it make sense to think about changing the paradigm > for model refinements? Do we need to "reduce" data anymore? One could > imagine applying various functions to model the intensity observed at every > single pixel on the detector. This might be unneccesary in many cases, but > in some cases, in which there is a lot of diffuse scattering or other > phenomena, perhaps modelling all of the pixels would really be more true to > the underlying phenomena? Further, it might be that the gap in R values > between high- and low-resolution structures would be narrowed significantly, > because we would be able to model the data, i.e., reproduce the images from > the models, equally well for all cases. More information about the nature of > the underlying macromolecules might really be gleaned this way. Has this > been discussed yet? > > Regards, > > Jacob Keller > > ******************************************* > Jacob Pearson Keller > Northwestern University > Medical Scientist Training Program > Dallos Laboratory > F. Searle 1-240 > 2240 Campus Drive > Evanston IL 60208 > lab: 847.491.2438 > cel: 773.608.9185 > email: j-kell...@northwestern.edu > ******************************************* > -- Professor John R Helliwell DSc
