ANALYSIS OF DIFFUSE-SCATTERING BY PROTEIN CRYSTALS

This paper is devoted to the contribution offered by the X-ray diffuse scattering analysis to the problem of plasticity of crystallized protein molecules. We first review the main published results, then we try to perform a synthesis of these results and of new observations that we have obtained on various proteins. Two types of displacements emerge from this review: intramolecular displacements correlated at very short range and long-range correlated intermolecular displacements. The possibility of detecting diffuse scattering resulting from intramolecular displacements correlated within entire parts of proteins is discussed.