The Discovery of Macromolecular Cryocrystallography

Talk Overview

In his postdoctoral studies, David Haas set out to reduce radiation damage to protein crystals during X-ray crystallography. In 1970, he published a paper on his invention of macromolecular cryocrystallography – freezing crystals to extend their lifetime in the X-ray beam. The widespread use of the synchrotron beginning in the 1970s made cryo-cooling essential, and today nearly all protein crystal structures deposited in the international Protein Data Bank use this method. In his second presentation, Haas shares an example of how cryocrystallography has aided structure-based drug design.

Speaker Bio

David Haas

David Haas was born in Buffalo NY, and raised in a Texas farming community near the Mexican border. He graduated from the University of Buffalo (now SUNY at Buffalo) in 1962 with a bachelor’s degree in physics, and pursued his PhD studies in the lab of David Harker at the Roswell Park Memorial Institute in… Continue Reading