What Methods May Be Used to Elucidate the Structures of Purified

Question

What methods may be used to elucidate the structures of purified proteins?
A)X-ray crystallography
B)bioinformatics
C)analysis of amino acid sequence of small fragments
D)NMR spectroscopy
E)both X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy

Accepted Answer

X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy are the two most commonly used methods for determining the structures of purified proteins. X-ray crystallography requires the protein to be crystallized and then bombarded with X-rays to produce a diffraction pattern that can be used to determine the structure. NMR spectroscopy involves analyzing the magnetic interactions of the atoms in the protein to determine its structure. Both of these methods can provide high-resolution structures of proteins. Bioinformatics and analysis of amino acid sequence of small fragments can be helpful in predicting the overall structure of a protein, but are not as reliable as experimental methods like X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy.