Crystallography for Health and Biosciences

Crystallography is a mature science. Nevertheless, there are fields in which, traditionally, structural and analytical methods different from scattering techniques are more widely used, typically leaving crystallographic methods in the hands of expert scientists, and hampering, in a few cases, the fruitful exchange of scientific knowledge between material scientists, biochemists, biologists and the pharma/biotech industrial world. To the goal of helping a new generation of young scientists from neighboring disciplines and fields, only occasionally associated with crystallography, we deemed it necessary to organize an International Summer School, in which renowned experts in the field of Crystallography for Health and Biosciences delivered lessons and tutorials, during a full intense week of lectures, discussions and mutual exchanges of opinions. Accordingly, this book collects the contributions of the Speakers and is organized in four main sections: Part A, in which the basics of the radiation-matter interaction and of the crystallographic techniques are reviewed. Part B, specifically devoted to small-molecule crystallography, with particular emphasis on organic materials (crystal chemistry of drugs and polymorphism). Part C, in which crystallography of nanomaterials and related experimental and computational aspects are presented. Finally, Part D is dedicated to macromolecular systems of biological origin. Needless to say, the different aspects discussed in this text find a suitable harmony in the mutual contamination of theoretical and experimental techniques, as well as in their underlying and unifying concepts.