  While many good textbooks are available on Protein Structure, Molecular
Simulations, Thermodynamics and Bioinformatics methods in general, there is no
good introductory level book for the field of Structural Bioinformatics. This
book aims to give an introduction into Structural Bioinformatics, which is
where the previous topics meet to explore three dimensional protein structures
through computational analysis. We provide an overview of existing
computational techniques, to validate, simulate, predict and analyse protein
structures. More importantly, it will aim to provide practical knowledge about
how and when to use such techniques. We will consider proteins from three major
vantage points: Protein structure quantification, Protein structure prediction,
and Protein simulation & dynamics.
  The main emphasis of this work is to provide a background on experimental
techniques for protein structure determination. The focus is set on X-ray
crystallography and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (NMR), which are by
far the main methods used to determine the structure of soluble proteins. We
will also introduce cryogenic Electron Microscopy (cryo-EM) and electron
diffraction which are more suited to analyze membrane proteins and larger
protein complexes. At the end, more qualitative techniques are summarized that
are used to obtain insight on the overall structure and dynamics of proteins.
Note that this introduction to protein structure determination aims at
familiarizing the reader to different experimental techniques, their benefits
and bottlenecks, but that a thorough mathematical and technical description of
the concept is beyond the scope of this work.
