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Here are some resources/tips that I've found helpful in my time working in a crystallography lab.

• Crystallography made Crystal Clear - good overview https://www.amazon.com/Crystallography-Made-Crystal-Clear-Macromolecular/dp/0125870736/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536938710&sr=8-1&keywords=Crystallography+made+crystal+clear
  
• Tererese Bergfors website: http://xray.bmc.uu.se/terese/tutorials.html Good tutorials
  
• Look for Studier 2002- his formulations for Auto-induction media. Of interest is the formulation for PASM-5052 should you need to do experimental phasing via Selenomet labeling. As a side note, always look up the percent sequence identity of your protein to its homologs in the PDB. If its below 40%, definitely plan to do experimental phasing. Even at that, some labs have started hopping straight to expressing and crystallizing Selenomethionine labeled protein and collecting on the selenium edge from the get-go so that they hedge their bets on phasing. If doing experimental phasing, always collect until your crystal is dead dead dead.
  
• Most common issue with crystallization in my experience is a sample prep issue. This paper was very helpful to me when troubleshooting protein prep quality issues. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.febslet.2013.10.044 One of my proteins was aggregating on the hours-days timescale. Don't neglect the utility of SEC, even if you see a single band on an SDS gel, you may have a mixture of oligomeric states which can only be detected by looking at the chromatogram from an SEC run.
  
• Look at the drops that do crystallize, then look at the neighbors in the same tray that don't have crystals. These observations can make it easier to figure out when you're close to the right crystallization conditions.
  
• High purity reagents- It's 2 O'clock in the morning, what is the purity of your Tween 20? 40%....40 fucking %. This is from Sigma aldrich, not some po dunk little chemical firm. Document your manufacturer if you need to use a detergent or reagent with purity this low. Regardless, document your fucking manufacturers of your reagents. One of the grad students in my lab was using TCEP and even though the purity was fairly high, a change of manufacturer stopped his protein from crystallizing. We also had a similar incident with a syringe filter manufacturer change.
  
• Submit samples for High-throughput screening at multiple concentrations, also recommended is to document the buffer your protein is in and try multiple different buffers so long as you get a clean chromatogram from SEC. Sometimes one buffer system works better than another for getting good quality crystals.
  
• Generally if possible, avoid glycerol. If your protein is having aggregation issues due to hydrophobic interactions, use a high-purity detergent like CHAPS, or n-Octyl-β-D-Glucopyranoside, or even sometimes an organic solvent like DMSO or isopropanol. All of the above mentioned compounds are the most cost-effective in my experience.
  
• Don't neglect the role of ligands. Sometimes you need to add a ligand or product to lock down the conformation.
  
• Don't neglect activity assays to make sure your sample preps are producing active protein.
  
• Don't count on an NMR structure to phase a crystal structure. I made this mistake, same protein, identical sequence, unable to phase with molecular replacement. I ultimately had to do a SAD experiment to phase.
  
• If your protein is badly behaved, you can try to rescue it with a maltose binding protein tag or a SUMO tag, etc. Sometimes they're helpful.
  
• DNA-binding proteins are often unstable in low salt when not bound to their target DNA sequence. Try binding the protein to its target DNA sequence then buffer exchanging into a low salt buffer.
  
• Seeding can sometimes be helpful.
  
• Make sure your sample purity is very high, the higher the better. Heterogeneity will fuck you on diffraction.
  
• Don't judge a book by its cover. Some crystals are ugly and diffract beautifully, others look beautiful and diffract terribly. I had these beautiful hexagonal crystals- no diffraction. In contrast, I had these plates that I expected nothing of that diffracted out to 1.7Angstroms.
  
• Common issue that can stop you from phasing is processing in the incorrect space group.
  
• Don't bother with HKL-2000 or HKL-3000. I strongly prefer XDS for data processing as it doesn't fail silently. There was a crystal dataset I was working on that had strong space group ambiguity and HKL-2k just wouldn't process it. XDS gave me enough feedback I was able to correctly diagnose and correct the issue. XDS is command line based but it gives you a lot more control and feedback.
  
• Get cozy with Phenix and Coot.
  
  I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions.

Interesting:

Life on the Edge: The Coming age of Quantum Biology by Jim Al-Khalili
Great, easy read on a fascinating topic of quantum biology; topics from animal migrations and photosynthesis elegantly discussed.

The Viral Storm: The Dawn of a New Pandemic
by Nathan D. Wolfe
Seat-of your pants virology that explores the coming viral pandemic. Great reading in view of the Ebola crisis in West Africa.

Life's Greatest Secret: The Race to Crack the Genetic Code by Matthew Cobb

Lilting historical re-telling of a well-worn story of the discovery of DNA, the genetic code, and the winners and losers of the race.

Useful:

Bioenergetics Paperback – by David G. Nicholls

The go-to text on Bioenergetics, useful for every aspect of biochemistry in my humble opinion.

Based on your post, I think you need more knowledge of biology and chemistry before you can really approach pharmacology. Gotta walk before you can run, if you will. But you're taking organic this year and hopefully biochem and a biology class next year so that will come with time.

If you're really excited about PK though, check out this youtube primer on the subject (~30min total). I also suggest checking out Derek Lowe's blog (/u/dblowe) In the Pipeline. There are over a decade of posts and especially since it's become associated with Science Translational Medicine, he does a great job introducing topics for those not directly in the field. He's made 73 posts tagged PK, and it may also give you insight about what your future career will be like and controversies in medicinal chemistry.

My undergrad med chem professor sadly passed away shortly before the course began, so I bought Richard Silverman's "The Organic Chemistry of Drug Design and Drug Action." Amazon has the 2nd edition (the one I have) for $13 and you may enjoy flipping through it when you take organic. However, it's a pretty advanced book (probably for folks who have already taken a med chem class) so you can also consider the legend EJ Corey's short book "Molecules and Medicine" or Patrick (the standard med chem textbook) if you want to see medicinal applications of organic while you take the course.

My favorite science-related leisure reading is Derek Lowe's blog In The Pipeline. He covers new developments in chemistry/biology, the drug discovery industry, and occasionally some other stuff. He writes it in a way would be interesting to anyone that like chemistry and biology regardless of their level of education. I always look forward to reading it over lunch.

​

If you are looking for a book, The Disappearing Spoon is a great set of true short stories about chemistry that is a really fun read.

Crystallography Made Crystal Clear is a fantastic resource for learning the theory behind protein crystallography and structure solution. I used it to learn when I was starting out and I still consult it at times.

Crystallography Made Crystal Clear: A Guide for Users of Macromolecular Models (Complementary Science) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0125870736/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Rp9MBb4PTEANT

Good luck!


Beyond this, I’ll add that there’s really no substitute for doing this hands on and learning from other students/postdocs in the lab. Crystallization feels like black magic a lot of the time, so the theory only gets you so far. Most of the learning really happens as you go along.

This little book really helped me out in terms of how to do basic things and WHY you're doing them (for organic chem, which can come in handy for biochem). It tries a little too hard to be 'hip' (it's aimed at 1st and 2nd year college kids), but it's definitely worth it to have it laying around or as a reference since most of the techniques are pretty standard to any experiment. I don't know why it's so damn expensive now though, I got it new for $30 a few years ago. I'd suggest getting a used copy.

Glad to help! I was actually doing a bit of snooping and you can get the entire book for only 6 bucks used!!! I feel so ripped off having bought it for way more back when I was taking classes haha

If you have an organic chemistry and biochemistry understanding, I'd highly recommend Molecules and Medicine. It's a really interesting read about different drug molecules, the history of their discovery, their mechanism of action, and a bit about the diseases they treat. We used it for my Biology & Chemistry of Medicine course, but I ended up reading the whole book because of how interesting it was!

Energy Changes in Biochemical Reactions by Irving Klotz is a great read for biochemical thermodynamics. It's a small volume that one can reasonably read cover to cover to get a good foundation on the subject.

'power sex and suicide' by Nick Lane. Great book on the importance of mitochondria.

There's actually a Bioinformatics for Dummies, and it's a pretty good and inexpensive introduction.

Statistical physics of biomolecules of Zuckeman is a good book. Also Ken Dill's Molecular Driving Forces is more thermodynamics. Both books are quite good.

I can strongly reccommend The Chemistry of Life by Steven Rose - I read it when I was about 16 and trying to decide what degree to do at university as well. It assumes no scientific knowledge or vocabulary, and covers most of the basic areas of biochemistry and cell biology. Because it was written in 1966, it doesn't have any "cutting edge" science in it - however, it's easy to read, and what's in there is still required knowledge for first-year biochem exams!

Power Sex Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life by Nick Lane is a good pick. It isn't entirely biochemistry, but does delve into the electron transport chain and metabolism. It is also packed with interesting stuff.

One of the books he's written: Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves.

For anyone interested.

Yes, this is the perfect choice.

An alternative would be Peter Hoffman's Life's Ratchet: How Molecular Machines Extract Order from Chaos https://www.amazon.com/Lifes-Ratchet-Molecular-Machines-Extract/dp/0465022537

In my biochemistry degree, we used Fundamentals of Biochemistry: Life at the Molecular Level by Voet et al.
It talks about kinetics, the various biochemical products in the human body, to the way they are created, etc. It may be overly detailed at times, but then, we used it for senior level biochemistry courses.
Link: https://www.amazon.ca/Fundamentals-Biochemistry-Life-Molecular-Level/dp/0470129301

Here is the mobile version of your link

Life on the edge

Voet and Voet. I swear by this book. It's damn near encyclopedic.