Lysozyme crystallization by vapor diffusion: characterization and modeling in the absence and presence of exogenous minerals

Comparative Studies of Protein Crystallization by Vapour-Diffusion and Microbatch Techniques

“…Through the vapour phase, the concentrations of ingredients in the drop are expected to equilibrate with those in the reservoir. In actual practice it has been shown (Chayen, Akins, CampbellSmith & Blow, 1988;Kimble, Rousseau & Sambanis, 1995) that the concentration of protein (measured versus time) during a vapour-diffusion trial reaches a lower concentration than theoretically expected. This is very likely because protein sequesters some water, lowering its vapour pressure.…”

Towards further understanding of protein crystallization : phase diagram, protein interactions, nucleation kinetics and growth kinetics

“…McPherson and Shlichta through examining the applicability of mineral surfaces as potential heterogeneous nucleants on various proteins [56,59]. After this initiative, mineral substrates [57,58], poly-L-lysine coated surfaces [61,62] and lipid layers [63][64][65] were applied to control nucleation as epitaxial nucleants. These epitaxial nucleants were found to influence the nucleation of protein crystals by modifying crystal habit, promoting unit cell properties or involving a lattice match [17].…”

“…was affected by the modification of crystal habit, promotion of the unit cell properties [17] or involving of a direct lattice match. After this initiative, a lot of efforts were also made to further investigate the key factor of the exogenous growth effects of the mineral surfaces [57][58][59][60]. The effects of exogenous mineral substrates were found to be more pronounced in the case of lattice matching than that of the minerals exhibiting lattice mismatching.…”

“…Considerable researches have also been carried out to study the effects of the liquid-liquid phase separation on the nucleation of protein crystals [18-26, 28, 35, 36, 52, 55]. Since heterogeneous nucleation can decrease the free energy barrier for nucleation and grow protein crystals at low supersaturation, various materials [56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72] have been tested as heterogeneous nucleation surfaces for protein crystallization.…”

High pressure crystallization of Purafect® subtilisin

“…Temperature control has been suggested as an easy and effective way to control supersaturation for nucleation (Rosenberger and Meehan, 1988;DeMattei and Fiegelson, 1992). Nucleation has also been shown to depend on the kind of particles present in the crystallizing solutions (Kimble et al, 1995).…”