VLD (vive la difference) is a novel ab initio phasing approach that is able to drive random phases to the correct values. It has been applied to small, medium and protein structures provided that the data resolution was atomic. It has never been used for non-ab initio cases in which some phase information is available but the data resolution is usually very far from 1 Å. In this paper, the potential of VLD is tested for the first time for a classical non-ab initio problem: molecular replacement. Good preliminary experimental results encouraged the construction of a pipeline for leading partial molecular-replacement models with errors to refined solutions in a fully automated way. The pipeline moduli and their interaction are described, together with applications to a wide set of test cases.
Keywords: VLD; automated structure solution; molecular replacement; phasing.