Dear PHENIXBB people, I have been working on several data sets collected from crystals grown in co-crystallization trials containing a small molecule and Calprotectin, a heterologous protein dimer comprised of two polypeptides with around 90 and 120 amino acids respectively. The crystallographic structure of Calprotectin complexed with a 18-aa peptide have been deposited in RCSB database under PDB entry 7QUV, with cell parameters a = b = 50.8, c = 148.8 in the P 32 2 1 space group. On the contrast, the bunches of data sets I collected give cell parameters a = b = 38.3, c = 196.3 in the P 6 2 2 space group when an oscilliation angle of 0.5 degree was used or cell parameters a = b = 38.2, c = 149.0 in the P 6 2 2 space group when an oscilliation angle of 0.2 degree was used. In either cases, Matthews_coef analysis would suggest that the crystal cell cannot accommodate the whole Calprotectin complex. I had used each single protein of Calprotectin as the search template for MR, but failed as well. Though Phenix.xtriage suggest nothing wrong with the data sets, however, considering that the two polypeptide conprising Calprotectin is structurally similar, I had also tried indexing the data sets under space group spanning P2, P3 apart from P622 and then run MR by a thorough combination of each data sets and different template choices, which, in opposition to what was expected, still gave no reliable MR solution. It's noteworthy that the diffraction pattern of my crytals seemingly showed that multi-crystal problem or other intrinsic growth defects might be underconsidered. In fact, I've been encountering the above crystallographic situation for 3 times recently, which all bear the following characteristics: (1) cell volume is far smaller than expected for containing targeted macromolecules (protein/DNA) that is used for crystallization. (2) no MR solution is achieved though MR template is extremely and sometimes 100% similar. (3) growth defects such as multi-crystal or fibrous diffraction problems possibly exist. Hopefully someone may have dealt with such issues before. Any suggestions is welcomed! Sincerely Chen PS: This message is also posted on CCP4BB. Cheng Chen, Associate ProfessorSchool of Life Sciences, Building 15, Tianjin University No.92 Weijin Road, Nankai District, Tianjin 300072, China