Study of macromolecules of biological interest by x-ray scattering

A brief review of the SAXS theory and experimental is presented. Solutions of crotamine, crotoxine, phospholipase and crotapotine are studied in several concentrations, extrapolated to infinite dilution and the results obtained are presented. The general shape of these proteins were also evaluated taking in consideration the relationships between the respective surface areas and volumes. A model was then devised taking into account the information available relative to aminoacid sequence, predicted secondary structure and spectroscopic data and its P(r) was calculated using the MULTIBODY program (Glatter (1980)). The P(r) curve is this way obtained showed a considerable agreement with the P(r) obtained resing the scattering curve. (author)