Nonphotochemical Laser Induced Nucleation of Hen Egg White Lysozyme Crystals

Abstract

Small droplets of supersaturated hen egg white lysozyme (HEWL) solution were exposed to intense linearly polarized laser pulses with different wavelengths, intensities, and pulse durations. Laser irradiation under some conditions significantly increased the number of droplets in which crystals were observed in a given time period, compared with nonirradiated samples. As a general rule, nonphotochemical laser induced nucleation (NPLIN) in lysozyme solutions was more effective with shorter aging time, 532-nm wavelength, higher peak intensity, and shorter pulse duration. Bovine pancreatic trypsin (BPT) was also examined using NPLIN, showing the potential application of NPLIN to other proteins.

Practical Physics Behind Growing Crystals of Biological Macromolecules

“…To overcome this problem and because primary nucleation is a stochastic phenomenon, seeding techniques are often used. However, some authors recently proposed unusual approaches using external fields to control crystallization from metastable solutions, for instance magnetic [28][29][30][31][32][33], [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41] or electromagnetic [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. Moreover, spatial and temporal location of nucleation can also be reached by confining the nucleation volume [52].…”

Laser-induced nucleation in protein crystallization: Local increase in protein concentration induced by femtosecond laser irradiation

“…Laser-induced nucleation is an attractive technique [7][8][9][10], but the mechanism is not completely understood yet. Yoshikawa et al reported that morphological changes in protein solution produced by a femtosecond laser are key factors for nucleation [4] and observed, using fluorescent-labeled lysozyme ''in agarose gel'', that laser-induced cavitation bubbles cause an increase in protein concentration [5].…”

Influence of energy and wavelength on femtosecond laser-induced nucleation of protein

“…To date, light-induced nucleation has been demonstrated by optical Kerr effect [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8], photon pressure [9,10], and photochemical reactions [11][12][13][14][15][16]. As another approach, we have proposed the focused irradiation of a femtosecond laser [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24], whose peak intensity is $TW/cm 2 .…”