Micro-Spectrophotometer

Micro-spectrophotometry is proving to be an important tool for assessing the catalytic properties of enzymes in the crystal (Bourgeois et al., 2002; Pearson et al., 2007). It can be applied to metallo-enzymes, photosensitive proteins or proteins with co-factors, substrates or products that absorbs in UV-VIS. Micro-spectrophotometry can be used to confirm the presence or absence of a substrate or a co-factor, as well as the redox state of a protein. It can also aid the design of efficient triggering of a reaction in the crystals or trapping of intermediate states.

BioCARS micro-spectrophotometer is available to users for crystal absorption measurements as a stand-alone instrument for off-line measurements. We use modified 4DX XSPECTRA micro-spectrophotometer system.

References

• • Bourgeois, D., Vernede, X., Adam, V., Fioravanti, E., and Ursby, T.  A microspectrophotometer for UV-visible absorption and fluorescence studies of protein crystals.  Journal of Applied Crystallography 35, 319-326 (2002) abstract
  • Pearson, A.R., Pahl, R., Kovaleva, E.G., Davidson, V.L., and Wilmot, C.M.  Tracking X-ray-derived redox changes in crystals of a methylamine dehydrogenase/amicyanin complex using single-crystal UV/Vis microspectrophotometry.  Journal of Synchrotron Radiation 14, 92-98 (2007) abstract