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Dear Jacob,

I'm not an expert on the topic, but from my experiences with twinning I can
agree with you. I recently solved my second twinned structure by MR (twin
fraction of 0.43, as estimated by Xtriage). Performing twin refinement in
Refmac or phenix.refine dropped the R-factors, as expected, but worsened
the geometry considerably without a noticeable improvement in the maps. For
this reason, I opted *not* to go with the twin refinement... I don't know
if others would make the same choice, though it seemed reasonable to me.
Besides, my Rwork/Rfree is down to 0.25/0.29, which ain't too shabby for
2.6 A resolution.

Cheers,
Chris

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 2:15 AM, Keller, Jacob <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Dear Crystallographers,
>
>
>
> Based on some data sets I have looked at and anecdotal-type evidence here
> and there I have gotten the impression that detwinning does not help in
> structure solution. (Please let me know if you have a case where detwinning
> saved the day.) Is there a clear answer to this enigma anywhere, to
> anyone’s knowledge? Wouldn’t it seem that **any** detwinning would be
> better than **no** detwinning? I understand that the errors explode as
> one approaches 50% twins and does detwinning, but still, I don’t think one *
> *loses** information by detwinning, right? Take the case of a 33% twin:
> since the twin-reflections are on average about half the intensity of the
> non-twin, and since they are generally not correlated in intensity, isn’t
> this like having noise added at 50% of the measured intensity? So why does
> detwinning make things worse generally? Is there something wrong in the
> assumptions underlying the detwinning algorithm, or perhaps something about
> the calculation that throws things off?
>
>
>
> A related sub-enigma: why is MR generally immune to twinning, but
> anomalous methods are susceptible?
>
>
>
> All the best,
>
>
>
> Jacob Keller
>
>
>
> *******************************************
>
> Jacob Pearson Keller, PhD
>
> Research Scientist
>
> HHMI Janelia Research Campus / Looger lab
>
> Phone: (571)209-4000 x3159
>
> Email: [log in to unmask]
>
> *******************************************
>
>
>