Ultralow-resolution ab initio phasing of filamentous proteins: crystals from a six-Ig fragment of titin as a case study

Low-resolution diffraction data (resolution below 12 Å) from crystals of a filamentous six-Ig fragment of titin, I65-I70, were used in ab initio phasing with the aim of calculating its lattice packing and molecular envelope. Filamentous molecules, characterized by marked anisometry and idiosyncratic crystal lattices, have not been addressed before using this method­ology. In this study, low-resolution phasing (19-122 Å) successfully identified the region of the unit cell occupied by the molecule. Phase extension to a higher resolution (12 Å) yielded regions of high density that corresponded either to the positions of individual Ig domains or to zones of dense intermolecular contacts, hindering the identification of in­dividual domains and the interpretation of electron-density maps in terms of a molecular model. This problem resulted from the acutely uneven packing of the molecules in the crystal and it was further accentuated by the presence of partially disordered regions in the molecule. Addition of low-resolution reflections with phases computed ab initio to those obtained experimentally using MIRAS improved the initial electron-density maps of the atomic model, demonstrating the generic utility of low-resolution phases for the structure-elucidation process, even when individual molecules cannot be resolved in the lattice.