Clemens Schulze-Briese

The rapid progress in protein crystallography over the last decade was tightly linked to the development of better sources in the form of undulator based synchrotron radiation beamlines, to better detectors, namely Image Plate and CCD detectors and to better software, allowing difficult experimental techniques such as Multiple wavelength Anomalous Dispersion (MAD) to become a routine tool to overcome the phase problem. A short description of the experimental setup at a protein crystallography beamline will be given. The main aim of the presentation is to show how the detector requirements are related to the diffraction properties of protein crystals. The advantages and shortcomings of different detector technologies will be discussed.