Acta Crystallographica Section D

Biological Crystallography

Volume 58, Part 9 (September 2002)

crystallization papers

Acta Cryst. (2002). D58, 1484-1486 [ doi:10.1107/S0907444902012969 ]

Crystallization and preliminary crystallographic study of a ternary complex between the T4 phage -glucosyltransferase, uridine diphosphoglucose and a DNA fragment containing an abasic site

L. Larivière, J. Kurzeck, U. Aschke-Sonnenborn, W. Rüger and S. Moréra

Abstract: A base-flipping phenomenon has been established for DNA methyltransferases and for DNA base-excision repair glycosylases and is likely to prove general for enzymes that need access to DNA bases to undergo chemical reaction. T4 phage [beta] -glucosyltransferase (BGT) is a good candidate for this novel mechanism. In order to confirm this, BGT was crystallized with an abasic site-containing DNA and uridine diphosphoglucose (UDP-glucose). The crystallization strategy is described. A complete data set was collected at 1.8 Å resolution on a Cu K [alpha] rotating-anode X-ray source. Molecular replacement was performed and the initial electron-density maps clearly show bound DNA.

Keywords: -glucosyltransferase; UDP-glucose; base flipping.