Comparison of different X-ray data-collection systems using the crystal structure of octreotide

The octapeptide octreotide crystallizes with three peptide molecules and about 20% water in the asymmetric unit, and in many ways possesses diffraction properties similar to those of a `mini-protein' consisting of 24 amino-acid residues. It diffracts to about 1.0 Å but data in the range 1.4–1.0 Å are weak. It provides a suitable test of different macromolecular X-ray data-collection techniques, especially of their ability to measure weak reflections accurately. In contrast to typical proteins it is possible to perform a full anisotropic refinement, that we believe provides a more objective test of the quality of the data than the internal consistency of equivalent reflections. We have collected a total of six data sets. The X-ray sources included synchrotron radiation, Cu Kα rotating anodes and Mo Kα sealed tubes; position-sensitive two-dimensional detectors from four manufacturers and a four-circle diffractometer with scintillation counter were employed. Two of the six data sets were collected at low temperature. Reasonable anisotropic refinement was possible with all area-detector data sets, although significant differences in the precision of the final model were observed. In addition we tested the ability of automated Patterson interpretation to solve the structure using the six independent data sets. The structure solution was only successful using the synchrotron or rotating-anode data sets, i.e. for the more intense sources. It appears that for structure solution the maximum resolution of the data is critical, whereas for refinement the accuracy of the data is more important.