Specific radiation damage can be used to determine phases de novo from macromolecular crystals. This method is known as radiation-damage-induced phasing (RIP). One limitation of the method is that the dose of individual data sets must be minimized, which in turn leads to data sets with low multiplicity. A solution to this problem is to use data from multiple crystals. However, the resulting signal can be degraded by a lack of isomorphism between crystals. Here, it is shown that serial synchrotron crystallography in combination with selective merging of data sets can be used to determine high-quality phases for insulin and thaumatin, and that the increased multiplicity can greatly enhance the success rate of the experiment.
Keywords: experimental phasing; genetic algorithms; radiation damage; radiation-damage-induced phasing; synchrotron serial crystallography.