Functional Sub-states by High-pressure Macromolecular Crystallography

At the molecular level, high-pressure perturbation is of particular interest for biological studies as it allows trapping conformational substates. Moreover, within the context of high-pressure adaptation of deep-sea organisms, it allows to decipher the molecular determinants of piezophily. To provide an accurate description of structural changes produced by pressure in a macromolecular system, developments have been made to adapt macromolecular crystallography to high-pressure studies. The present chapter is an overview of results obtained so far using high-pressure macromolecular techniques, from nucleic acids to virus capsid through monomeric as well as multimeric proteins.