Protein crystallography with neutrons - status and perspectives

The current state of the art and future perspectives for protein crystallography with neutrons have been reviewed and discussed at an international workshop recently organized by the Hahn-Meitner-Institut (HMI) and Max-Delbruck-Center (MDC) in Berlin, and supported by the Neutron Round Table activity. The main topics discussed and the conclusions drawn are presented in this paper. While the available flux from even the most powerful neutron sources is much lower than that available at a modern synchrotron-radiation source, there is no doubt that neutrons can additionally provide vital information in structural biology that is difficult to obtain using other methods. One of the overriding themes at the workshop was the fact that the current instrumentation and facilities do not fully exploit the neutron beams that are available. Current trends indicate that many of the problems that have limited the efficiency of biological neutron scattering have been recognized and with new technological advances important efforts are under way to tackle these problems. It is clear that the use of neutrons in biology will become increasingly significant at existing and new neutron sources.