Blog Crystallography

In this new CSD Educators blog, it is my pleasure to introduce Helen Maynard-Casely from Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO). In this blog, Helen, who is also a CSD Champion, will tell us about the International School of Crystallography, held in person in Erice (Italy) between 3rd and 11th June 2022. 

The U.S. National Committee for Crystallography (USNC/Cr) of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is providing an online workshop series for students and researchers on the use, development, and maintenance of crystallographic and structural databases. CCDC is excited to present a two-day session at the event about the Cambridge Structural Database! To celebrate, we’re hosting a live AMA (ask me anything) via Twitter with the CCDC session host, Dr Jeff Lengyel, and departmental crystallographer at the University of Notre Dame, Dr Allen Oliver.

In this addition to our CSD Educators series, we hear from Dr Louise Dawe, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Louise is a collaborator and champion of the CSD—helping to develop some of our classroom modules. Here, she outlines current examples of collaborative crystallography workshops and schools in the Americas that can help educators plan future structural science events. It is based on a lecture presented by the author at the 2020 IUCr Congress and General Assembly.

How many groups took part in the first challenge of the 7th CSP Blind Test? What kind of experimental work goes on behind the scenes? Read on for answers, and an interesting Q&A with a team from Catalent. Catalent is a development and manufacturing partner that has provided the high-quality experimental data for this test of crystal structure prediction (CSP) methods.

This year the CCDC and the Protein Data Bank (PDB) are hosting a day-long symposium at the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Fall 2021 meeting. The conference theme is “the resiliency of chemistry,” and our symposium focuses on understanding enzyme function in 3D.

The renovation at the CCDC building in Cambridge started in 2019. Artwork to educate and inspire our team and visitors on the theme of crystallography was a key requirement.

CCDC Founder and crystallographer, Dr Olga Kennard recently received the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr)’s twelfth Ewald Prize for her invaluable contribution to the development of crystallographic databases — specifically the Cambridge Structural Database (CSD). On 14^th August, we are delighted that Olga’s achievements will be celebrated in the Ewald Prize Lecture during the IUCr Congress Opening Ceremony.

Molecules that have different molecular packing arrangements despite identical chemical composition are said to be polymorphic. The variety of possible forms, each an allomorph (or polymorph), presents opportunities and challenges in various fields – including the drug industry and agriculture and forestry. In this blog, we talk to United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Research Scientist Emeritus¹ and the Editor-in-Chief of Cellulose, Dr Alfred D. French about his work with cellulose, which has multiple polymorphs (allomorphs).

The CCDC offers a selection of products and services free of charge for the benefit of the scientific community, which includes a free version of Mercury. While the free version supports several functionalities, many popular features are only available with a licence. Here we explain the differences between the free and paid licence versions of Mercury.

The CCDC is excited to announce the 2020 Struchkov Prize winners. Advancing structural science is a global effort, and the CCDC has been a proud financial supporter of the Struchkov Prize Association (SPA) since 2015.