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There was a thread a while back which related to this a bit:

"Re: [ccp4bb] Small lines in diffraction pattern (more info)"

In that thread, there were mentioned the papers:

Faure et al NSB 2 Feb 1994
Kajiwara J. Appl. Cryst. (1971). 4, 329

These seem to bear on the issue of diffuse scattering, and in particular the 
procedure in the NSB paper could in principle be applied to model 
refinements, I think.

Jacob


*******************************************
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: [log in to unmask]
*******************************************

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Edward Snell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 2:29 PM
Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Refining against images instead of only reflections


Hi Paul,

I'll probably open myself up to criticism (welcomed) but I think I'd 
disagree with this somewhat. While crystallography from the Bragg 
reflections provides a nice static picture of the structure, looking at the 
diffuse scatter in more detail may give more knowledge about mechanism - 
i.e. if there are any characteristic modes associated with significant 
motion etc. Higher resolution is not always good, one of my enlightening 
experiences came from paying attention to collecting very complete, very low 
resolution data. Similarly, after collecting 0.8A data from a large protein 
I leant a lot about data processing but even more about how to not tell 
anyone, move the detector back, and then attenuate the beam :) The high-res 
provided a lot more work and didn't provide any more useful structural 
knowledge than a 1.2A data set collected in a fraction of the time. However, 
it did provide a window into how X-rays can perturb the structure - being 
greedy is not always good.

Diffuse scattering has been neglected in the field (for good reason) but I 
think we have the processing power to take advantage of it now. To misquote 
Richard Feynman, "there is plenty of room at the bottom", make sure you get 
the low resolution information as well as the high.

I do agree that we may have to rethink image storage somewhat. Looking over 
a paper not too long ago that had over 30,000 images involved in the 
analysis made me remember the days when the tape drives were slower writing 
data than the detectors producing it. That mad scramble to start backup 
before starting collection ;) Realtime readout, continuous rotation etc., 
may need to redefine our thoughts of images.

Cheers,

Eddie

Edward Snell Ph.D.
Assistant Prof. Department of Structural Biology, SUNY Buffalo,
Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute
700 Ellicott Street, Buffalo, NY 14203-1102
Phone: (716) 898 8631 Fax: (716) 898 8660
Skype:      eddie.snell                 Email: [log in to unmask]
Telepathy: 42.2 GHz

Heisenberg was probably here!


-----Original Message-----
From: CCP4 bulletin board [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Paul 
Smith
Sent: Wednesday, January 20, 2010 3:00 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Refining against images instead of only reflections

Hi Jacob,

I see you're still in the crystallography business.

While you have an interesting idea, I doubt refining structures against 
entire images would be of any use in obtaining higher quality macromolecular 
structures.  Much of what you see on the screen is a function of parameters 
completely unrelated or irrelevant to the structure being studied.  Diffuse 
scattering can come from the cryo liquid surrounding the crystal as well as 
the fibers of the mounting loop itself.  Background scattering is related to 
beam collimation.  Spot size/shape is a function of crystal morphology among 
other things.  In addition, every detector has its own peculiarities that 
make the intensities observed apart from diffraction spots particular to 
that detector.  Also, you would have to take into account other physical 
properties such as ambient temperature, detector dark current fluctuations, 
variations in air absorption, etc.

So, you could conceivably fit all of these various parameters to the images 
on hand, but none of them give  you any actual information about your 
structure.  As always, if you want more information about your structure, 
get higher resolution data.

Nonetheless, I do think some thought could be put in to exactly how data are 
reduced.  Perhaps the impending era of real time detector readout will help 
us rethink about spot profiles and intensity integration in a more 
sophisticated way. We may see a return to thinking about ccd readouts like 
an area detector which makes the process of analyzing images moot.

--Paul

--- On Wed, 1/20/10, Jacob Keller <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: Jacob Keller <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: [ccp4bb] Refining against images instead of only reflections
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 12:47 PM
> 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: [log in to unmask]
> *******************************************
>