Bovine liver glutamate dehydrogenase has been crystallized as an abortive complex with glutamic acid, NADH, and an inhibitor, GTP. Crystals of this complex were grown using the sitting drop vapor diffusion method with PEG 8000 as the precipitant and diffract to better than 2.5 Angstrom resolution. The crystals belong to the space group P2(1) with an entire enzyme hexamer in the crystallographic asymmetric unit. Self-rotation and self-Patterson functions clearly define the orientation and position of this hexameric enzyme. (C) 1997 Academic Press.