Dear Francis,
do not let your heart break… my undergrads are successfully doing heavy atom derivatization and de novo phasing of new structures, and understanding the fundamentals. We simply ran into a low res problem and I was hoping to avoid walking through the individual steps of running RAVE since we have bigger fish to fry at the present. I do agree that they need a solid foundation in all aspects of crystallography, but we are chasing pubs at present. I do not believe in push-button crystallography, but I do think for undergrads we can skip some steps. These particular fellows will be going to grad school after all.
Best regards,
Z
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Zachary A. Wood, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
University of Georgia
Life Sciences Building, Rm A426B
120 Green Street
Athens, GA 30602-7229
Office: 706-583-0304
Lab: 706-583-0303
FAX: 706-542-1738
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On Mar 4, 2016, at 4:09 PM, Francis Reyes <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> On Mar 4, 2016, at 8:44 AM, Zachary A. Wood <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Don’t get me wrong, RAVE does a fantastic job, but it is a bit time consuming and seems ripe for some automation (especially when teaching undergrads how to do this stuff).
>
> My heart is breaking.
>
> Yes automation has its place, particularly in very experienced crystallographers, and perhaps industry.
>
> However, especially for students*, there's nothing more exciting (and satisfying) than starting with a cruddy density, combined with some biochemical intuition and, if you're lucky, some biochemistry experiments, be able to improve phases and build an atomic model *by hand*.
>
> Sad is the day when students receive perfect / high resolution data, click a few buttons, and walk away with a built structure.
>
> I hope its not to this point yet.
>
> F
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