Crystalline sponges to aid X-ray analysis

Researchers from The University of Tokyo have used porous metal complexes dubbed crystalline sponges to enable X-ray crystallography of natural small molecules that do not readily crystallize.¹ The group is forming a company to extend the method to large peptides and proteins.

X-ray single-crystal diffraction is the only method that provides direct structural information at the atomic level of a compound, and it is considered more reliable than NMR or mass spectrometry. However, molecules of interest must be obtained as single crystals, which is not always possible...