Ab Initio Reconstruction of 3D Shape of Biological Macromolecules from 1D SmallAngle X-ray Scattering Data

The application of Small Angle X-ray Scattering (SAXS) in the structural studies of biological macromolecules has been focused on obtaining overall parameters like radius of gyration, maximum dimension and a pair distance distribution function in early stages. Since the 1970s, the elegant idea of reconstructing low-resolution molecular envelopes ab initio was proposed and further investigated in the passing decades. In this talk, Shang will give an introduction to SAXS instrumentation and its application to macromolecules and then discuss details for two methods of 3D ab initio shape reconstruction: the spherical harmonics approach and the trial-and-error Debye modeling approach.