CRYSTALLIZATION AND PRELIMINARY DIFFRACTION STUDIES OF THE STRUCTURALDOMAIN-E OF THERMUS-FLAVUS 5S RIBOSOMAL-RNA

The ribosomal 5S RNA is an essential constituent of the large ribosoma l subunit, To overcome the difficulties of crystallizing large RNA mol ecules such as 5S rRNAs, we decided to divide the 5S rRNA in five doma ins A through E to determine their structure, Recently we determined t he crystal structural of the helical domain A. Here we report the crys tallization of the chemically synthesized domain E of the Thermus flav us 5S rRNA. The crystal form is trigonal with unit cell dimensions: a = b = 42.80 Angstrom and c = 162.20 Angstrom. Diffraction-data to 2.8 Angstrom have been recorded and the structure solution is currently un derway by means of MLR and MAD techniques.