The use of selenomethionine and anomalous dispersion has become the most wi
dely used way of solving the phase problem for de novo protein structure de
termination. In this paper, MAD data collected from oxidized and reduced se
lenomethionine-containing protein are described, and it is shown that oxidi
zed selenomethionine has a very strong phasing power and can be efficiently
used if the oxidation is uniform. The comparison was performed on threonin
e synthase crystals. For example, the phasing power of the oxidized data is
doubled for the dispersive signal and is 20% stronger for the anomalous si
gnal at the peak wavelength. The strength of the anomalous signal can be us
ed to improve the signal when a protein contains few methionines or for sin
gle anomalous dispersion. The oxidation of some selenomethionines shows in
the electron-density map through the presence of water molecules within hyd
rogen-bonding distance of the putative O atom.