The Role of the Neutron Scattering Analysis and the View in the Future

Abstract

Recently, Cryo-EM has caused the revolution in the field of structural biology and the neutron analysis work using big crystals is said to be out of date. But the only method of experimentally determining hydrogen positions is the neutron diffraction. The reason why the high threshold of using neutron diffraction from the view of a pharmaceutical company is that it takes too long time and too much man power to obtain appropriate crystals and results against the drug discovery’s time-line. There is not promising to get required results by the procedures of data collection and processing for the non-experts of the neutron field. Like Cryo-EM was changed by the direct detector, the breakthrough may change the neutron diffraction technologies in future. Before we wait such a breakthrough, the support system which non-experts can access easily to the neutron analysis involving human resource development should be necessarily. The time is coming to open the macro molecule neutron scattering analysis for non-experts besides neutron macromolecular fields.